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REVISED 


Pocket Geologi 



AND 


MINERALOGIST 

OR 

SIXTEEN CHAPTERS 

ON 

Coals, Oils, Ores and Other Minerals, 

FOR 

PRACTICAL PEOPLE. 

- * - 

I.—BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 

II.—THE COAL MEASURES. 

III. —OIL AND GAS. 

IV. —IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 

V.—GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 

VI.—COPPER AND TIN ORES. 

VII.—LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 

VIII.—NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME ORES. 

IX.—ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 

X.—GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 

XI.—ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 

XII.—CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 

XIII. —SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 

XIV. —MINERAL PAINTS. 

XV.—GRITS AND SPARS. 

XVI.—OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 



FREDERICK H. SMITH, 


Engineer and Geologist, 

237 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 



1890 . 





This Pocket Book is a revision and combination of the 
writer’s two former volumes—the “Pocket Geologist,” of 1877, 
and “Rocks, Minerals and Stocks,” of 1882, —with some omis¬ 
sions, alterations and additions to bring it up to date. It is 
written, not for the scientist, but for practical people who have 
time to make money. It contains 204 pages, excluding index &c., 
is bound in cloth with pocket and flap, and is mailed postpaid on 
receipt of the low price of One Dollar, to cover its costs and 
charges, as it partakes of the nature of a professional card, and 
is intended to advance the writer’s business as well as the 
reader’s interests. 

The writer’s correspondence shows many instances of profit¬ 
able mineral enterprises now being prosecuted by men who got 
their first ideas on mineral subjects from his two earlier volumes, 
and he expects even better results from this, as it is in better 
shape for con venient use. He will always be glad to hear from 
his readers concerning their mineral ventures, but he begs to re¬ 
mind them that all mail or express charges should be prepaid, 
that a chemist’s assay costs, prepaid, from five to fifteen dollars, 
according to the number of elements determined, and that an 
engineer and geologist, also, requires some prepaid consultation 
fees when his professional opinion or advice is asked. But it is 
expected that the information contained in this new “Pocket 
Geologist” will, generally, enable the reader to answer his own 
questions. F. H. S. 


r 


Member Am. Soc. Civil Engineers. 

Member Am. Inst. Mining Engineers. 

Associate Am. Inst. Electrical Engineers. 



FREDERICK H. SMITH, 
Consulting & Bridge Engineer, 
GEOLOGIST, 

227 E, German St., Baltimore, Md. 


O' 


Copyrighted, 1890, by 





CONTENTS 


I.—Bottom Facts and Bed Rocks. 

Plain Language — Mineral Elements — Mineral Compounds — Igneous 
Rocks — Transition Rocks — Aqueous Rocks — Geological Chart — 
Fossil Earmarks — Veins and Beds. 


II.—Tiie Coal Measures. 

Carbon —Bituminous Coal, Anthracite, Cannel, Splint, Block, Lignite, 
Peat, Coke. Position — False Coals, Lower Coals, Upper Coals, 
Triassic Coals, Tertiary Coals. 




III.—Oil and Gas. 

Petroleum— Oil and Gas bearing Strata, Oil and Gas catching Strata, 
Oil Breaks, Oil and Gas Springs, Oil and Gas Prospects.—Remarks. 

IY.—Iron and Manganese Ores. 

Iron —Magnetite, Hematite, Limonite, Siderite, Pyrite. Manganese— 
Glance, Pyrolusite, Manganite, Psilomelane, Wad, Rhodocrocite. 

V.—Gold and Silver Ores. 

Gold— Vein Gold, in Pyrite, in Quartz, in Tellurium—Wash Gold, in 
Slate, in Sand, in Gravel, in Clay, in Sea Water — Gold Saving — 
Gold Testing. Silver — Silver Ores: Silver Glance, Horn Silver, 
Ruby Silver, Antimonial Silver, Stephanite, other Ores—Silver 
Saving—Silver Testing. 

YI.—Copper and Tin Ores. 

CoprER —Chalcopyrite, Enargite, Tetrahedrite, Chalcocite, Bornite, 
Cuprite, Melaconite, Chrysocalla. Tin— Tinstone, Stannite. 

VII. —Lead and Zinc Ores. 

Lead— Galena, Carbonate, Phosgenite, Leadhillite, Sartorite. Zinc— 
Zinc Blende, Calamine, Smithsonite, Zincite, Gahnite. 

VIII. —Nickel, Cobalt and Chrome Ores. 

Nickel— Pyrrhotite, Millcrite, Nickelite, Glance. Cobalt— Smaltite, 
Cobaltite, Cobalt Pyrite, Cobalt Bloom. Chrome— Chromite. 



CONTENTS. 


IX. —Antimony, Mercury, Platinum, &c. 

Antimony — Antimony Glance. Mercury — Amalgam, Cinnabar. 

Platinum—Aluminum—Uranium. 

X. —Gems and Precious Stones. 

Agate — AlaDaster — Amber — Amethyst — Aquamarine — Carnelian — 
Chrysoberyl — Chrysoprase — Diamond — Emerald — Garnet — Hya¬ 
cinth — Jasper — Lazulite — Meerschaum — Onyx — Opal — Ruby — 
Sapphire — Topaz — Tourmaline — Turquoise — Ultramarine — Jade. 

XI. —Ornamental and Building Stones. 

Serpentine — Malachite — Mexican Onyx — Marble —Limestone — Sand¬ 
stone — Slate — Granite — Syenite — Gneiss — Porphyry. 

XII. —Cements and Clays. 

Cements— Rosendale, Cumberland, Selenite, Portland, Roman. Clays— 
Brick Clay, Potters’ Clay, Fire Clay, Kaolin, Bauxite, Dinas. 

XIII. —Salts and Fertilizers. 

Salt — Soda — Borax — Saltpetre — Ammonia — Gypsum — Phosphate 
Rocks — Potash Rocks — Marls. 

XIY. —Mineral Paints. 

Ochre — Umber — Vermilion — Smalt — Ultramarine — Aquamarine. 

XV.—Grits and Spars. 

Tripoli — Corundum — Emery — Novaculite — Barytes — Feldspar — 
Fluorspar — Cryolite — Strontia. 

XVI. —Otiier Valuable Minerals. 

Alum — Asbestos — Soapstone — Talc — Sulphur — Graphite — Asphalt — 
Mineral Wax —Mica. 


INDEX. 



I. 

BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Plain Language—Mineral Elements—Mineral Com¬ 
pounds—Igneous Rocks—Transition Rocks—Aque¬ 
ous Rocks—Fossil Earmarks—Veins and Beds. 


PLAIN LANGUAGE. 

The following schedule of terms and definitions will he 
adhered to, as closely as possible, throughout this work: 

LUSTRE. 

The lustre of minerals is an important feature, and is to 
be determined from freshly-broken surfaces. The kinds of 
lustre are as follows: 

Metallic is the lustre of polished surfaces of metals or 
freshly-broken surfaces. Imperfect degrees or slightly 
tarnished surfaces are sub-metallic. 

Adamantine lustre is that of the diamond and that of other 
real gems. Sometimes it is clouded by the metallic. 

Vitreous lustre is that of broken glass. Sub-vitreous is 
very common. White quartz is often vitreous, and marble 
is sub-vitreous. 

Resinous lustre is that of the resins, balsams and clear 
gums. . 

Pearly lustre is that of pearl and mother-of-pearl, and is 
often modified by the metallic. 

Silky lustre is the peculiar lustre of silk, and nearly always 
due to fibrous formation. 




6 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Lustre has degrees of intensity as well as kinds, but we 
will only state degrees when they are not changeable. 
They vary so greatly with the different angle or face of the 
mineral presented and the amount of light available that 
they are hardly useful. 

TEXTURE. 

Texture refers to the particular arrangement of the grains, 
crystals, sheets, blocks, or other bodies going to make up 
the mass of the specimen. 

Massive texture is when the mineral is built up of grains 
so small as to be practicably indistinguishable by the un¬ 
aided eye. 

Granular texture is when the mineral is a mass of grains 
large enough to be seen. 

Crystalline texture is when the mass is built up of one 
large crystal or many smaller ones, just large enough not to 
be called granular. • 

Foliated texture is when the mineral is a block made up of 
sheets or plates having one line of cleavage. 

Fibrous texture is when the sheets are split up into fibres 
or strips by a second line of cleavage. 

Tabular texture is when the block is a mass of smaller 
blocks, formed by three cleavage lines. 

The massive, granular and crystalline textures are all 
granular, really, but the divisions are based on differences in 
size of grain. The foliated, fibrous and tabular textures 
are all really foliated, whichever way we turn the block, 
but the divisions are based on the shapes of the crystals, 
and the number of cleavage lines which have shaped them, 

FEEL. 

The ‘'feel” of a mineral is a very useful distinguishing 
feature. The feels are named below: 

Greasy is the feel of soapstone and other magnesian min¬ 
erals, such as French chalk, talc, meerschaum, asbestos, etc. 

Harsh is the feel of trachyte, pumice, basalt and other 
igneous rocks, but more especially of the lavas. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED IlOCKS. 


7 


Meagre is the feel of the softer lime minerals, such as 
chalk, marl, etc. 

CLEAVAGE. 

Many minerals, hy reason of crystallization or other 
causes, break into plates or blocks, the fractures occurring 
on parallel lines, and much more readily on those lines than 
in other directions. Minerals having one line of cleavage 
will separate into sheets. Two lines of cleavage split the 
sheets into four-sided bars or strips, and a third line of 
cleavage will cut off the ends of the bars, making blocks of 
them. All the faces formed by the cleavage lines are plane 
and smooth. There are but two full degrees of cleavage, 
perfect and imperfect, and intermediate degrees must be 
fractionally named, if expressed at all. 

CLEARNESS. 

Clearness is dependent greatly on the thickness of the 
specimen, as there are very few substances which cannot be 
hammered or shaved down so thin that they will transmit a 
certain amount of light, especially when examined under 
the microscope. Clearness is graded as follows: 

Transparent is when outlines and details of objects can be 
seen clearly through the specimen. When the outlines 
alone, and no details, can be distinguished the specimen is 
semi-transparent. 

Translucent is when light is transmitted through the body 
of a reasonably thick specimen, but no images are outlined. 
It is classed as semi-translucent when the light passes 
through the thin edges of a bevel-edged piece, but does not 
pass through the body of the specimen. 

Opaque is when light is not seen by the naked eye to pass 
through any portion of the specimen. 

ELASTICITY. 

Nearly all minerals have more or less elasticity, and the 
degrees are stated as follows: 

Elastic is when the mineral will spring back after having 
been bent. Mica is an example. 


8 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Flexible is when the mineral can be bent without breaking, 
but will not spring back of its own accord. 

Malleable is when the mineral can be hammered out cold 
into sheets without crumbling. 

Sectile minerals can be powdered under the hammer, but 
can be cut into sheets or slivers with the knife. 

Brittle minerals break up when cut, bent or hammered. 


HARDNESS. 

I 

This quality in minerals is very variable, and is most 
reliable and useful when tested with or on freshly broken 
edges or surfaces of homogeneous composition. Hardness 
is expressed in the following scale of ten degrees. Diamond, 
being the hardest known substance, is placed at ten, and 
other well-known substances occupy the full degrees: 


Diamond.10 

Corundum. 9 

Topaz. 8 

Quartz. 7 

Feldspar. 6 


Apatite. 5 

Fluorspar. 4 

Calcite.3 

Gypsum. 2 

Talc. 1 


By testing strange minerals on any of those named in the 
table, the comparative hardness of the strange mineral is 
determined. It is to be observed that two minerals of equal 
hardness will scratch each other by using a sharp edge or 
corner of one against a surface of the other, and vice versa. 
Diamonds are thus cut by means of their own dust; the 
dust, consisting of minute grains all bristling with points 
and edges, cuts away rapidly the face of the massive crystal. 

This is also true of minerals of almost equal hardness, the 
point or edge of the softest cutting slightly into the face of 
the hardest. Diamond can often be cut by corundum in this 
way. Frequent reversal of point of one to face of other, and 
point of other to face of one, and careful comparison, will 
give accurate results. Hardness of minerals will be given in 
this book in the descriptions. 













BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


9 


COLOR. 

Color is determined from observing the color of the powder¬ 
ed specimen. The color of the mass very often differs from 
that of the powder, and the latter is the only reliable color. 
For instance, the iron ore limonite (commonly called brown 
hematite) is red, brown, purple, black or yellow in mass, but 
its powder is always yellow. The best way to determine 
color is to file or grind off some powder and examine it when 
lying on a sheet of white or black paper or china or slate, 
but when the mineral is soft enough to leave a streak by 
rubbing it on black slate or white china, that method is best. 
In stating the colors of minerals we will use just such names 
as we all understand. 


FRACTURE. 

Fracture refers to the appearance of the broken surface of 
a mineral when freshly fractured across the line of cleavage 
or lamination. 

Conchoidal fracture is when the surfaces are roughly curved 
into concave and convex, somewhat like a ball-and-socket 
arrangement. 

Even fracture is when the surfaces are flat planes, but differ 
from cleavage planes in being spotted over with holes and 
points. 

Uneven fracture is when the rough points and holes cover 
the whole fractured surface; in other words, the surface is 
altogether irregular and unsystematic, ragged and rough. 

SPECIFIC GRAVITY. 

This is the actual weight or density per cubic inch, or other 
unit, of any substance when compared with the weight of 
the same bulk of pure water. The specific weights of some 
well-known substances are below: 


SUBSTANCE. GRAVITY. 

Ice.0.94 

Fresh water.1.00 

Sea water.1.03 


SUBSTANCE. GRAVITY. 

Bituminous Coal.1.3 

Anthracite coal.1.5 

Sulphur.3.0 









10 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


SUBSTANCE. GRAVITY. 

SUBSTANCE. 

GRAVITY. 

Marble. 

....2.6 

Antimony. 


Aluminum. 


Zinc. 


Quartz. 

....2.6 

Tin. 


Talc., 


Iron, wrought.... 


Feldspar. 

....2.8 

Cobalt. 


Flint Glass. 


Manganese. 


Fluorspar.. 


Nickel.. 


Diamond .. 

3 5 

Copper. 

. 8.9 

Topaz. 


Siiver. 


Corundum ... 

....4.0 

Lead. 

.11.4 

Barytes.. 

_4.5 

Mercury. 


Average of our Globe... 


Gold. 



The determination of the specific gravity of any substance 
is made by weighing a piece of dry mineral first in the air, 
and then weighing it again when submerged in water and 
suspended by the lightest possible thread or hair. If it 
weighs, say, ten grains in the air and eight grains in the 
water, the difference of two grains is the weight of the equal 
bulk of water which is displaced. The specific gravity of 
the mineral is, therefore, five (5.0), as the dry weight of ten 
is five times as great as the two grains weight of the equal 
bulk of water. 

When the mineral is soluble in water but not soluble in 
alcohol or other fluid whose gravity is known, the mineral 
can be weighed in the other fluid, and the results reduced to 
the water scale. When a specimen contains two substances 
in known percentages, and the gravity of one of them only 
is known, the gravity of the other is a matter of simple 
arithmetic. When extreme accuracy is required, care must 
be taken to guard against changes in temperature, as even 
water changes slightly its density with thermal changes; 
Sixty degrees above zero on Fahrenheit’s scale is the standard 
for air, water and mineral during the process when greatest 
accuracy is desirable. 

Powdered or porous minerals must be allowed time to 
absorb all the water possible before the wet weight is taken. 
The air lodged in the cavities of the mineral tends to buoy 
up the mineral when it is submerged, and often it has to be 


























BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


11 


boiled in order to expel this air. The rule is to have air in 
the cavities when the dry weight is being taken, and water 
in them when w r et weight is taken. 

The water molecules enter the cavities between the mineral 
molecules pretty much as a handful of small bird-shot will 
run down into a glass tumbler already full of large buck-shot, 
and yet another handful of fine, clean sand will run down 
into the cavities between the bird shot. An ounce or two of 
water can be poured into the tumbler to make sure of filling 
up the cavities between the sand grains, and a grain of 
cochineal will permeate between the water molecules and 
dye the whole affair scarlet. A speck of musk will perfume 
it all through by the same process, and it can still be charged 
with carbonic-acid gas or salt. And still the sub-atoms of the 
ethereal medium may be ebbing and flowing through glass, 
lead, water, sand and all, as easily as an evening zephyr 
would pass through a shad seine hung out to dry. The so- 
called supernatural may be only natural, after all. 


MINERAL ELEMENTS. 


At present, the chemists have segregated and named sixty- 
four elements or simple substances out of which this entire 
globe, and all its contents and belongings of the mineral, 
or vegetable, or animal kingdoms, are made up. The names, 
symbols and atomic weights of these elements are as 
follows: 


Name. 

Symbol. 

Atomic Weight. 

Aluminum 

AL 

27.3 

Antimony 

Sb 

122. 

Arsenic 

As 

75. 

Barium 

Ba 

137. 

Bismuth 

Bi 

208. 

Boron 

B 

11. 

Bromine 

Br 

80. 



12 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED HOCKS. 


Name. 

Symbol. 

Auomic Weight. 

Cadmium 

Cd 

12. 

Caesium 

Cs 

133. 

Calcium 

Ca 

40. 

Carbon 

C 

12. 

Cerium 

Ce 

92. 

Chlorine 

Cl 

35.5 

Chromium 

Cr 

52. 

Cobalt 

Co 

59. 

Columbium (Niobium) 

Cb (Nb) 

.94. 

Copper 

Cu 

63.4 

Didymium 

D 

96.5 

Erbium 

E 

112.6 

Fluorine 

F 

19. 

Gallium 

Ga 

• • • • 

Glucinum (Beryllium) 

G (Be) 

9. 

Gold 

Au 

196. 

Hydrogen 

H 

1 . 

Indium 

In 

113.4 

Iodine 

I 

127. 

Iridium 

Ir 

198. 

Iron 

Fe 

56. 

Lanthanum 

La 

92.5 

Lead 

J>b 

207. 

Lithium 

Li 

7. 

Magnesium 

Mg 

24. 

Manganese 

Mn 

55. 

Mercury 

Hg 

200. 

Molybdenum 

Mo 

96. 

Nickel 

Ni 

59. 

Nitrogen 

N 

14. 

Osmium 

Os 

200. 

Oxygen 

O 

16. 

Palladium 

Pd 

106. 

Phosphorus 

P 

31. 

Platinum 

Pt 

198. 

Potassium 

K 

39. 

Rhodium 

Ro 

104. 

Rubidium 

Rb 

85.4 

Ruthenium 

Ru 

104. 

Selenium 

Se 

79. 

Silver 

Ag 

108. 

Silicon 

Si 

28. 

Sodium 

Na 

23. 

Strontium 

Sr 

88. 

Sulphur 

S 

32. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED BOCKS. 


13 


Name, 

Symbol. 

Atomic Weight. 

Tantalum 

Ta 

182. 

Tellurium 

Te 

128. 

Thallium 

T1 

204. 

Thorium 

Th 

231. 

Tin 

Sn 

118. 

Titanium 

Ti 

50. 

Tungsten 

W 

184. 

Uranium 

U 

240. 

Vanadium 

V 

51.4 

Yttrium 

Y 

■61.7 

Zinc 

Zn 

65. 

Zirconium 

Zr 

90. 


The above-named substances are called elements because 
science has not yet succeeded in splitting up any one of 
them into atoms of two or more of the others ; but how soon 
this will be done we can’t tell. Already an Austrian chemist 
has announced that the exact atomic weights of a large 
number of the elements bear a multiple relation to those of 
the four chief elements: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and 
hydrogen. He thinks that eventually all the other elements 
will be shown to be derived from these four in different 
combinations, and that possibly these four may be reduced 
to hydrogen only, or to some one still unknown. 

At present the physical conditions of the different sub¬ 
stances are very various. Oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen 
are supposed to be fixed gases. Fluorine and chlorine are 
also gases, but can be liquefied. Bromine and mercury are 
liquids easily vaporized, while the others are solid at ordi¬ 
nary temperatures. 

MATTER AND ENERGY. 

The word matter includes within its meaning all substances 
of all kinds known to the senses or to the imaginations of 
of men, whether those substances be solid, liquid, vaporous, 
gaseous or ultra-gaseous, whatever that may mean. All 
experience goes to show that matter is indestructible by any 
agency, but whether or not that indestructibility reaches 
backward or forward into the Infinite we can know nothing 


14 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


about. We have no evidence at all bearing on the case, so 
we take it as we find it, and we find that although we can 
change matter from one condition to another condition, we 
cannot destroy it nor change any one kind of matter into 
another kind of matter. Iron will be iron, whether solid, 
liquid or gaseous, and that is about as far as we have got. 

The word energy includes within its meaning all forms of 
force, active or latent, such as heat, light, motion, weight, 
cohesion, repulsion, attraction, electricity, magnetism, affinity 
and all other forms and sub-forms and appearances. Energy, 
like matter, is indestructible so far as we know, but we can 
change one kind of energy into another, and so on through 
the list, without having annihilated it, or left any of its 
units unaccounted for. 

ATOMS AND MOLECULES. 

Matter is infinitely divisible; its attribute, energy, accom¬ 
panies it down through all its subdivisions, and we are unable 
to conceive of any particle of matter so small but that it 
may be composed of two or more still smaller particles held 
together by some form of energy. For practical purposes, 
however, we must assume a temporary stopping place in 
this process of subdivision, so we call that a molecule which 
is supposed to be the smallest particle of any one substance 
which retains all the properties of the same substance in 
larger parcels. This molecule is the physical unit, and all 
larger amounts of the same substance are simply bundles or 
agglomerations of these molecules. 

These molecules themselves are divisible into two or more 
smaller particles called atoms , which are the chemical units 
of matter, and are supposed to contain only the chemical 
forms of energy. Thus water is a mass of molecules, each 
one being the smallest bit of water that can exist and still 
have weight, fluidity, wetness and all the other properties of 
water. This molecule contains three atoms, viz.: one of 
oxygen and two of hydrogen, which are held together by 
chemical energy. The water molecule is a compound mole- 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


15 


cule, composed of atoms of different elements or substances; 
but there are simple molecules composed of enough atoms 
of any one substance to develop physical energy. The 
elements whose molecules are thus variously built up are 
called monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, etc. Atoms do and 
molecules do not combine with each other chemically, while 
molecules do and atoms do not unite with each other 
mechanically. 

In addition to the list of elements, there is a partially 
known substance called the ethereal medium, which fills all 
space. Some think it to be an ultra-gaseous condition of 
matter which is sub-atomic, and devoid of both chemical 
and physical energy, and of absolutely perfect fluidity. 

SYMBOLS AND ATOMIC WEIGHTS. 

The atomic weights of the elements are the weights or 
quantities of each required in order to combine with one 
weight unit of hydrogen in making up into molecules. The 
atomic weights are thus the combining weights of the 
elements, and have no reference to actual weight per inch or 
other unit of volume. 

The symbols shown in the list of elements are convenient 
abbreviations used by all chemists, and are generally derived 
from the Latin names. 

The symbols and atomic weights are used entirely in 
writing or figuring formulae. Thus the formula Fe 7 S 8 ex¬ 
presses nearly all that is essential to know about a lump of 
magnetic pyrites. It shows it to be a mass of molecules, 
each of which contains seven atoms of iron and eight atoms 
of sulphur. Now, by multiplying each of these numbers of 
atoms by the respective atomic weights, we find that the 
mineral contains 392 parts by weight of iron and 256 of 
sulphur, which is substantially sixty per cent, of iron and 
forty of sulphur. 


16 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


MINERAL COMPOUNDS. 

There are three classes of minerals or mineral compounds, 
and although the varieties in minerals are almost uncount¬ 
able, they are all reducible to one of three classes. These 
are as follows: 

Natives are masses of simple molecules of a single substance 
or conglomerations of simple molecules of different substances 
mechanically intermixed but not chemically combined. Such 
are the native metals, the alloys and the amalgams. 

Binaries are compound molecules, each composed of the 
atoms of two elemental substances chemically united. Such 
are the sulphides, chlorides, oxides, etc. 

Ternaries are compound molecules, each composed of the 
atoms of two elements chemically united indirectly by or 
through atoms of a third element. Such are the silicates, 
carbonates, sulphates, etc. 


PRINCIPAL BINARY COMPOUNDS: 


Water. 

This is Hydrogen Oxide, 

Composed of Hydrogen, 

“ Oxygen, 

Lime. 

This is Calcium Oxide, 

Composed of Calcium, 

“ Oxygen, 

Magnesia. 

This is Magnesium Oxide, 

Composed of Magnesium, 
“ Oxygen, 

Soda . 

This is Sodium Oxide, 

Composed of Sodium, 

“ Oxygen, 

Potassa. 

This is Potassium Oxide, 

Composed of Potassium, 
“ Oxygen, 


11 per cent. 

89 


72 per cent. 

38 “ 


60 per cent. 
40 “ 


74 per cent. 
36 “ 


83 per cent. 
17 “ 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED BOCKS. 


17 


Alumina. 

This is Aluminum Oxide, 

Composed of Aluminum, 

“ Oxygen, 

Silica — Quartz. 
This is Silicon Oxide, 

Composed of Silicon, 

“ Oxygen, 


63 per cent. 
47 “ 


per cent. 
53 


The foregoing seven minerals are all binary compounds, 
and they constitute about 98 per cent, of all the crust of our 
globe. 

The next steps in building up the globe are the 


PRINCIPAL TERNARY COMPOUNDS, 

which are as follows, and are mostly silicates, and come in 
groups: 

Mica. 

This is a large group, the principal members of which are 
named Biotite , Phlogopite and Muscovite. The latter is the 
most common and abundant, and is selected for description. 


Gravity.3.7 to 3.1 

Hardness.3.0 to 3.5 

Alumina.34 p. ct. 

Silica. 47 p. ct. 


Potassa.9 p. ct. 

Water. 4 p. ct. 

Sundries. 6 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to transparent; 
color, white, green, yellow, black; feel, smooth; elasticity, 
flexible to elastic, cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; 
texture, foliated. 

The coloring matter of the micas is usually iron, and 
often a part of the potassa is replaced by soda. Mica is one 
of the principal ingredients of the true granite, in which 
rock it is easily distinguished in little bundles of plates or 
scales. Sometimes it is in large pockets in granite or gneiss 
rocks, and then can be split up into transparent plates, 
which are used for stove plates or windows. Some people 
call it isinglass 








18 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Feldspar. 

There are many feldspars, the principal ones being 
Anorthite, Labradorite , Albite , Oligoclase, Ortlwclase , Andesite. 
The orthoclase is most abundant,, and is therefore selected 
for description. 


Gravity.2.7 to 2.9 

Hardness.5.8 to 6.1 

Silica..65 p. ct. 


Alumina.17 p. ct. 

Potassa. 17 p. ct. 

Dirt, etc.1 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly to vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, 
white, red, green, pink; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity; 
brittle; cleavage, perfect in three directions; fracture, 
uneven; texture, tabular. 

Feldspars occur in thick plates and tabular masses, which 
break up into small, nearly cubical blocks. The light flesh 
color is most abundant, but the colors are always blotched. 
Feldspar often forms great rock masses, mostly parts of 
dykes porphyritic in texture, or in sheets of overflow. It 
is also one of the three constituents of granite. When a 
bed of feldspar decomposes, the potash or other alkali 
washes out and the silica and alumina remain behind as 
kaolin or porcelain clay. Some of the feldspars have lime or 
soda or magnesia instead of potassa. 

Hornblende. 

This group is sometimes called the Amphibole group, the 
principal members being Tremolite , Actinolite y Smaragdite , 
Asbestos , Hornblende. The latter being much the most abun¬ 
dant is here described: 


Gravity.3.0 to 3.3 

Hardness.5.0 to 6.0 

Silica.45 p. ct. 

Alumina...13 p. ct. 


Magnesia.13 p. ct. 

Lime.12 p. ct. 

Iron .12 p. ct. 

Potassa and Soda.5 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly to vitreous; clearness, from transparent 
all the way to opaque; color, green, brown, black; feel, 
smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect to 
perfect; fracture, conchoidal to uneven; texture, granular, 
but sometimes slaty or fibrous or columnar 


















BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


19 


Magnetism is sometimes present, due to the iron. True 
hornblende is often found in bundles of hexagonal crystals. 
It is a constituent in syenite, which is. the hornblendic 
granite. It also forms some large rock masses, portions of 
dykes or overflows. 

Augite. 

This is the most abundant of the Pyroxene group, the 
others being Diallage , Sahlite , Malacolite , Leucagite. The 
description of augite is this : 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 
Silica.... 
Lime.... 


,3.2 to 3.5 
6.0 to 6.5 
50 p. ct. 
22 p. ct. 


Magnesia.13 p. ct. 

Alumina. 7 p. ct. 

Iron. 7 p. ct. 

Soda, etc. 1 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous to vitreous ; clearness, sub-translucent to 
opaque; color, green, brown, black; feel, smooth to harsh; 
elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, conchoidal 
to uneven; texture, granular and sometimes crystalline in 
hexagonal prisms, shorter than hornblende. Augite decom¬ 
poses into bodies of greenish earth, which fill cavities in the 
rocks of which it is a constituent. 


Epidote. 

This is the principal member of its own group, and other 
members are Allanite , lhaite , Zoisite. The description of 
Epidote is as follows: 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 
Silica.... 
Lime...., 


3.1 to 3.4 
6.0 to 6.4 
38 p. ct. 
25 p. ct. 


Alumina .. 

Iron. 

Water, etc, 


22 p. ct. 
12 p. ct. 
3 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
yellow,green, brown, black; feel, smooth; elasticity,brittle; 
cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, 
and very rarely is it crystalline, fibrous or foliated. 

Epidotc is abundant in the prime and in the primary 
rocks, and is generally associated with hornblende. The 
fine granular epidote sometimes forms rock masses of 
considerable size. 



















20 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 

Talc. 


This group contains French Chalk , Meerschaum , Steatite or 
Soapstone and Talc, which is here described: 

Gravity.2.4 to 2.7 Magnesia.32 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.0 to 1.2 Water.4 p. ct. 

Silica. .64 p. ct. 

Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
white, gray, green, brown; feel, greasy; elasticity, flexible 
to brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal to even; 
texture, massive, granular or foliated, sometimes looks like 
starry radiations as seen in magnesian marble. 

Talc is the most abundant of all the great magnesian 
silicates. The principal gold regions of the world are 
among the talcose slates of the Primary Formation. 

Serpentine. 

Other members of this group are Bastite , Cerolite , Oymnite , 
Marmolite. The points on Serpentine are: 

Gravity.2.5 to 2.8 I Magnesia.43 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 to 3.7 Water.. 13 p. ct. 

Silica.44 p. ct. / 

Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
green; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, flexible to brittle; 
cleavage, imperfect; iracture, uneven; texture, granular. 

Serpentine is very abundant among the primary rocks, 
and amounts to an eruptive rock all by itself, showing in 
dykes and round-backed ridges and hills. It is much in 
favor as a fancy building stone, and properly handled it 
produces very fine architectural effect. When very bright 
green and capable of taking high polish it is much used for 
mantels and other interior work and is called “Precious” 
Serpentine. When it is streaked with magnesian marble it 
is called “Verde Antique,” and will be referred to further 
along in this book. 













BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


21 


CHRYSOLITE. 

Other members of this group are Monticdlite , Wohlerite, 
Fayallite, but Chrysolite itself is much the most abundant, and 
is here described: 

Gravity ...3.3 to 3.5 Magnesia.50 p. ct. 

Hardness.6.0 to 6.8 Iron Oxide. 8 p. ct. 

Silica.42 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, yellow, 
green, brown; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle to very tough; 
cleavage, imperfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular. 

Chrysolite is usually found in dykes and pockets, but they 
are large and form great bodies. It is the home of corundum 
and emery. Some little magnetism has been observed, owing 
to the presence of the iron. Chrysolite is found in the 
mountains of North Carolina in very large bodies. 


CHLORITE. 

The principal members of the Chlorite group are Penninite, 
Prochlorite , Margarite , Ripidolite. The last is the important 
one, and is here described: 


Gravity...2.6 to 2.7 

Hardness.2.2 to 2.3 

Silica.32 p. ct. 


Magnesia.36 p. ct, 

Alumina.18 p. ct. 

Water, etc.14 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous to pearly; clearness, translucent; color, 
green to slightly reddish; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, 
flexible to brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, even to slight¬ 
ly uneven ; texture, massive to granular and scaly. 

Chlorite is very abundant among the primary rock for¬ 
mations, and the chlorite slates are nearly as famous as gold- 
bearing rocks as are the talcose slates. The chlorite slates 
are generally greener and brighter than the talcose slates, 
don’t feel so greasy either, and are generally found overlying 
the talcs, although sometimes they lie in alternating strata. 

These nine ternary compound minerals will be further 
referred to in the chapters treating of their economical values, 
when they have any, but at present they are described as 
constituent minerals composing the igneous rocks. 















22 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


IGNEOUS ROOKS. 

These rocks, called also the eruptive rocks, are supposed to 
come from the earth’s interior or core rock, and they are the 
first aggregations of the great constituent binary and ternary 
compound minerals. These minerals are aggregated in these 
rocks in varying proportions, so that no full descriptive list 
can be made of them, but their names and general composi¬ 
tions and characters are about as follows : 

LAVA. 

These igneous or erupted rocks of all kinds are called 
Lam when they are of light weight and porous or frothy 
or ashy in structure, and some kinds are called Pumice. 
These rocks are found mostly around volcanoes, ancient or 
modern. Glassy lava is called Obsidian. 

TRAP. 

Trap rocks are any kind of igneous or erupted rock which 
is laid down in sheet upon sheet, the edges looking like steps 
of a staircase, while lava is generally the result of violent 
eruption. Trap is produced by a slow and dignified out¬ 
pouring of melted rock. Trap rocks containing pebbles or 
other spherical cavities, where pebbles might have been, are 
called Amygdaloidal. 

BASALT. 

This consists of the minerals feldspar, augite and chry¬ 
solite, in various proportions, and there is often some iron. 
It is a dark gray or greenish gray rock, very crystalline and 
finely granular in texture, and nearly always it is in columns 
of six sides, standing up vertically or inclined, and often 
lying horizontally. There are dykes of it in Alabama and 
elsewhere which stand up four or five feet above the ground, 
and look like piles of cord-wood. Fingal’s Cave and the 
Giant’s Causeway in Europe, and the Palisades of the Hudson 
River, or Thunder Cape on Lake Superior, are noted' 
localities. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


23 


DOLERITE. 

This consists of feldspar and angite with some iron, and 
is the same as basalt with the chrysolite omitted. It is, there¬ 
fore, not so greenish as basalt, and the augite, not having so 
tenacious a combination with other minerals, is apt to 
decompose into greenish earth which washes out and leaves 
the dolerite full of cells and pores—looks pockmarked. 
It has the same tendency to crystallize into six-sided columns 
as basalt, and is often mistaken for it. 

DIORITE. 

Diorite is often called Greenstone , but this name is more 
properly applied to this same rock after it has been washed 
down and deposited as one of the primary rocks and melted 
up again and re-crystallized into a massive rock. It is 
abominably hard and tough in any condition, and is greenish 
gray in color, or rather gray mottled with green. It is made 
up of hornblende and feldspar. 

TRACHYTE. 

This is a very narsh-feeling, porous and light-weight rock 
composed of feldspar with some hornblende and a very little 
mica in small particles. Its color is generally pale-gray or 
pale-blue, but it is sometimes yellowish or reddish. 

PORPHYRY. 

True porphyry is composed entirely of feldspar, the 
arrangement being a number of large crystals of feldspar 
embedded in the cement of the same material. It is an 
agglomerate, whereas it is often the case that conglomerates 
are called porphyry by men who ought to learn better. The 
agglomerates are those in which the pebbles and the cement 
are the same materials, while in conglomerates they are of 
different materials. 

' These igneous rocks are principally visible to the naked 
eye, disposed in sheets intercalated between the beds of the 
great primary formations, and sometimes in the secondaries 
and tertiaries; and they sometimes exist as the very top 


24 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


rocks in those volcanic regions where the lava beds cover 
many hundreds of square miles; and sometimes they form 
mountains. 

When our little Earth was sufficiently cooled down to 
permit the great bulk of the fiery gases to condense into 
liquid form, and this liquid was nearly ready to congeal 
into solid rock, the globe took its final form; that of a ball 
slightly flattened at the poles and bulged out several miles 
at the Equator, being exactly the shape given to a ball of 
red-hot glass by revolving it rapidly on a spindle. 

As our red-hot globe continued to cool down, its diameter 
contracted, and its surface congealed into crusts which were 
wrinkled up into ridges as the globe shrunk up. These 
crusts were continually being cracked and broken up and 
overlapped on each other, and covered by fresh sheets of 
melted rock poured out from the interior through the cracks, 
and these again cracked and covered and re-covered until 
the surface was sheet upon sheet piled flatwise, endwise, 
sidewise, edgewise, and every otherwise, like the structure 
of an ice gorge in a big river. 

As the original gases contained the atoms of all these sub¬ 
stances belonging to our globe, and as all these substances do 
not liquefy at the same temperature, it is plain that when the 
surface of the globe was congealing into crusts there must 
have been fiery clouds of unliquefied gases hanging up over¬ 
head. These gases have all been gradually absorbed into the 
globe except the atmospheric air, which doubtless will remain 
unabsorbed until we have no more use for it. 

When the lowering temperature reached the proper point, 
the oxygen and hydrogen in the fiery clouds combined with 
each other and formed superheated steam, which in time 
cooled and condensed into water, and descended during long 
ages as scalding-hot rain, which blistered and scalped off 
the surfaces of the hot rocks, and was driven up again as 
steam. As the rocks further cooled down, the water could 
begin to collect in the depressions and form boiling lakes, 
from which the steam constantly arose, only to fall again 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


25 


elsewhere as hot rain, and scalp off more rock materials, and 
wash them down into the depressions. 

It is possible that nearly all the materials out of which the 
sedimentary rocks are now formed were originally scalped 
off the core rock of the globe during these early days of 
steam, hot water and violent upheavals, and that the work 
done since those days has been principally the re-washing 
re-arranging and re-depositing over and over again of the 
same old debris. The violent upheaval of the bottom of a 
sea or lake, accompanied by a neighboring depression of 
corresponding size, the rush of the water from the old sea 
to the new, and the simultaneous outpouring of a half an 
ocean of red-hot lava into the water, must have been rather 
immense. 

The globe has continued to lose its heat until the present 
time, and it has also continued to shrink in size. The crust 
has also continued to thicken, and it must have thickened 
downwards by the addition to its underside of materials 
solidified by cooling out of the molten interior. This thicken¬ 
ing enables the crust to withstand greater and greater 
accumulations of strain from globe shrinkage, and this in 
turn lengthens the intervals between the upheavals and 
earthquakes caused by the crushing of the abutting edges of 
the earth crusts. 

This crushing and giving way always takes place along 
the line of least resistance, and one shock or series of shocks 
so weakens such materials as it does not crush that the next 
shock breaks up the already weakened materials. We find, 
therefore, that earthquakes are confined to certain countries, 
while other regions are free from them. This has been the 
case as far back as our histories reach, and it is probable 
that modern quaking and volcanic regions are the same as 
those in which this kind of action took place most frequent¬ 
ly and violently In the earlier days; but it is probable that in 
the still earlier days these upheavals and crushings were 
scattered and without systematic arrangement on lines of 
least resistance. 


26 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


As the intervals of time between the great earthquakes 
and upheavals became longer, the disturbances became 
greater, owing to the increased amount of accumulated re¬ 
sistance to be overcome all at once. This is verified by- 
reference to all the great mountain ranges of the modern 
world. The Himalayas, Alps, Rockies and Andes have been 
the result of comparatively modern upheavals, as they all 
have recently-formed rocks and clays high up near their 
summits, which sedimentary beds must have been formed 
by deposition of sand, silt and shells under water before 
the upheavals took place. The shells are all the shells of 
salt-water species of Jurassic or later ages. 

It was a wise old darkey deacon who cherished a mental 
reservation on the subject of Omnipotence being equal to 
the task of making two hills without a hollow between them. 
When a rubber football is sealed up in summer with warm 
air in it, it is round and plump, but when winter comes the 
contained air cools and contracts, the surface of the ball 
collapses and falls in, shaping itself into one or more dimples 
with raised edges. Just so, as the molten interior of the 
globe cools and contracts, the crust falls in, in spots, and the 
edges are raised up. The spots are the oceans and the 
raised edges are the mountain ridges, and the portions neither 
raised nor sunken are the great continental plains and table¬ 
lands. 

Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, is a towering peak of 
black granite standing out of water many hundreds of miles 
away from any other land. Every square foot of the peak 
above water is carved into most grotesque forms, and there 
are many idols thirty feet high, facades of temples, altars, 
etc., and the carvings extend down under the surface of the 
sea as deep as can be seen with the aid of the water glass 
through the clear water. This peak is thought to have 
been the central religious shrine of the people inhabiting 
a great continent which was engulphed in pre-historic 
times. There are indications that there was a similar col¬ 
lapse of a continent in the Atlantic Ocean also. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


27 


If great continents collapse and go down under the sea, 
other great continents must have come up out of the sea 
about the same time to preserve the equilibrium. The word 
“cataclysm” has been used to describe the smash that takes 
place at such times. Just consider what a cataclysm that 
must have been when those two continents were engulphed, 
and the great mountain ranges above mentioned were 
upheaved, and probably large portions of their continents 
with them. What became of the old empires and republics, 
party platforms and propriety, iron-clad ships, bridges and 
creeds, stock markets, women’s rights and national debt3? 

There is consolation for us in the thought that perhaps 
the earth’s crust has now become so thick that the shrinkage 
force cannot hereafter crush it seriously, and will expend 
itself in splitting up the interior of the earth into radial- 
shrinkage cracks like those seen in broken cannon balls. 
Our modern earthquakes and volcanoes are probably due to 
local overstrains in portions of the outer crust, the over¬ 
strain being probably a residuum left over from the last 
general quake, acting on weakened strata. 


TRANSITION ROCKS. 

But while the foregoing lavas, traps, diorites and porphy¬ 
ries are the true igneous or eruptive rocks, there is another 
class of rocks which have*been washed off from the surface 
of the igneous rocks, and laid down in beds by the action of 
water, and have been afterwards subjected to such great heat 
that all the water has been burned out of them; these are the 
metamorphic or transition rocks, and they have been held in 
the heated condition so long, that many of them are truly 
crystalline while some of them have been actually melted, 
and thus their original stratification has been lost, and they 
have cooled down into massive blocks with irregular lines 
of cleavage. These transition rocks constitute the great 
primary formation, which is the only one of the geological 



28 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED BOCKS. 


formations which extends in greater or less force everywhere 
around the globe. 

We must, in studying formations, constantly bear in mind 
that, as a general proposition, all those portions of the earth’s 
crust that were above water at any given period were being 
cut down, and all those portions that were below water at 
that time were being filled up. This is modified by the fact 
that submerged coast lines were being cut down by shore 
currents, and upland valleys were occasionally having tem¬ 
porary deposits made in them; but these modifications were 
confined to spots, and were only temporary effects. 

This accounts for the fact that, although the different rock 
formations are piled on top of each other, like the leaves of 
a book, yet nowhere do we find the book complete. A por¬ 
tion of a leaf is torn out here, and a portion of another leaf 
is torn our there, and so on, all down through the whole 
thickness of the book, so far as we have yet discovered. 

There is always enough left of any one leaf to show that 
such a leaf existed, and this is made of the materials which 
were laid down under water during that particular age which 
it represents. The materials were taken from the uplands 
of that age, and were torn out of the exposed portions of 
earlier leaves. 

The “ Geological Column,” shown on next page, gives the 
succession of the rocks, as they have been determined by 
Geologists all over the world. Some few of the beds and 
groups are not yet recognized in America. The names are 
mostly those applied by the New York Geological Survey, 
and it is customary in this country to refer the beds of other 
localities to this survey when they are sufficiently identified, 
although these beds may be named locally for local use. 

The rocks enumerated on the column, taken in their great¬ 
est thickness respectively, aggregate about fifteen miles from 
the top to the lowest known depths. 

The Boman numerals and Latin names in the middle col¬ 
umn of the Geological Chart represent the system used by 
the Bogers Brothers, in their Virginia and Pennsylvania 
Beports, and these are often referred to by geologists. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 29 


O 6 

i ■ 

1 . 

■d 



i 5 p 

1 3D 

© 

Alluvial. 

O N 


03 

s 

p. 

a 

o 

u 

Diluvial. 



3 

Pliocene. 


03 h 

Eh * 

-4-3 


a 

P 

Miocene. 

Eocene. 




c5 *i 

Upper Chalk. 





Lower Chalk. 

© 



P ° 

S? 03 

P? O 

Upper Sand. 




Lower Sand. 











© 


© 


Wealden. 

o 

N 

O 


4-i 

P- 

© 

© 

(n 

Upper Oolite. 
Middle Oolite. 

© 


Ph 

c3 

Lower Oolite. 



C—< 

(h 

Upper Lias. 



© 

►"D 

Middle Lias. 



bC 

< 


Lower Lias. 




^ © 

Keuper. 




*- 01 

Musclechalk. 




cS 

Bunter Sand. 



a.i 


Permian. 



o 

3 03 

Upper Coals. 



c3 

O p 
O 

Lower Coals. 


. 

cl 

*- ^ 

C3 © 

Millstone Grit 



cs 


Mount'nLime- 


03 

c 

a 


Pocono. [stone 


O 

© 



Catskill. 

<2 

© 

GQ 



Chemung. 

1 

© 


Portage. 



a u 

P 

a 

Genuessee. 

P 


\x+ 

q 

Hamilton. 

© 



o 

Marcellus. 

© 


C 

> 

© 

Upper Helder. 

<3 


© 

bfl 

p 

Schoharie. 



<3 


Cauda Galli. 

o 

© 




Oriskany. 

"o 

N 




Lower Helder. 

c 




Saliferous. 

'cj 


d 


Niagara. 

Ph 




Clinton. 




a 

Medina. 



o 

.2 

Oneida. 



s 

5 

Hudson. 



U- 

o 

5} 

Utica. 



© 

Trenton. 



be 


Chazy. 



<3 


Calciferous. 

Potsdam. 

©* 

u 



Iluronian. 

•r» 

O 

N 

O 

c3 

a 

be 

>^.p 

J-H —H 

Moutalban. 

Labradorian. 

W 

Ph 

M 


Laurentian. 

Azoic or lifeless time, Chaos. 


• 

Soil, Sand, Clay, Peat. 

Drift Clay, Boulders, Glacial. 

Sand, Clay, Marl, Lignite. 

44 It 44 °u 

“ 44 4' 44 

Marl, Clay, Flints, Lignite, 

44 44 4 4 u 

Green Sand Marl “ 

44 44 44 44 

Limestone, Sand. Clay. 

Fish Egg Limestone. 

44 44 44 

44 44 44 

Clay, Shale, Limestone. 

Shell Marl. 

Limestone, Bones, &c. 

Shales, Lime, Sand, Coal. 

44 44 44 44 

New Red Sandstone, “ 

Shales, Marl, Gypsum. 
Mahoning Sandstone, Coals. 
Shales, Coals, Limes, Sands. 
Mountain Conglomerate. 
Limestones, Shales, [stone. 
False Coals, Brk’n Bed Sand- 

XIII. Coal 
Measures. 

XII. Serai. 

XI. Umbral. 

X.Vespertine 

IX. Ponent. 

Old Red Sandstone, Brown- 
Coarse Gritty Shale, [stone. 
Sandstones, Shales. 

Shales, Slates. 

Shales, Flagstones. 
Bituminous Shales. 

Flinty Limestones. 
Limestones, Sandstones. 
Cocks-tail Sandstones. 
Coarse Pebbly Sandstones. 

Vlll.Vergent 
or Cadent. 

VII. Meridial 

VI.Pre-Merid. 

Limestones. 

Onondaga Salt Group. 
Limestone Shales. [Iron Ore. 
Sandstone, Limestone', Red 
Hard Mountain Sandstone. 
Conglomerate. 

Shales. 

Shales. 

Birdseye Limestone, Gas. 
Limestone. 

Blue Limestone. 

Mountain Sandstone, Iron. 

V. Scalent or 
Surgent. 

IV. Levant. 

III. Matinal. 

II. Auroral. 

I. Primal. 

Met am orphic 
or Transition 
Rocks. 

Slates, Schists, Marble. 
Gneiss, Schists, Granites. 

44 44 44 

44 44 44 

Plutonic. 

Igneous Core of the Globe. 























































30 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


The transition or primary rocks make a rather small show 
at the bottom of the Geological Column, but the four groups 
aggregate in thickness some eight or nine miles from the 
bottom of the secondary down to the lowest known point, 
but how much further down it is to the contact with the 
azoic or core rock we don’t kno\fr. 

The kinds of rock included in the primaries are as follows, 
and they are all crystalline: 

PEGMATITE 

Is a very coarse-grained, ill-regulated rock, made up of feld¬ 
spar and quartz in very large crystals, and a little mica. 
The color is most frequently yellowish, and the crystals are 
so large that it is at times sub-translucent. 

GRANITE 

Is built up of well-regulated crystals of feldspar, quartz 
and mica, and it is called granite because it is so perfectly 
granular. The quartz is generally white, the feldspar white 
or pinkish, and the mica is usually lead-colored but often 
dark brown or even black, and gives ruling color to the 
mass, except in the red or Scotch granite, where the color is 
due to red feldspar. 

SYENITE. 

This is hornblende granite, the hornblende being in place 
of mica in the true granite. It is more apt to be darker in 
color and considerably finer in grain than the micaceous 
granite. It is found in great sheets and masses like granite. 
This stone is the Egyptian black granite. 

PROTOGENE. 

This is talcose granite, the talc replacing the mica in this 
stone, just as hornblende replaces it in syenite. It is, of 
course, granular, and occurs in great sheets and masses. 
The substitution of talc for mica gives it a slightly greenish 
tinge. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


31 


GNEISS. 

This is made up of any of the minerals contained in the 
foregoing granular rocks, hut when gneiss contains mica it 
does not often contain either talc or hornblende. When 
containing hornblende it generally omits mica and talc. 
When talc is present, mica and hornblende are mostly 
absent. This shows that gneiss is either washed down 
granite, syenite or protogene, or else the granites are melted 
gneiss. The gneiss is evidently a sedimentary rock, as it is 
coarsely and irregularly stratified, and there are reasons for 
holding that it is part of the original sedimentary rocks 
scalped off in the earliest days. 

Gneiss fades upwards into the finer grained and more per¬ 
fectly stratified schists; downward into the highly crystal¬ 
line, granular granite rocks, and horizontally it fades into 
granite also. There are cases where granite rocks rest on 
top of gneiss, separated therefrom by a sharp line of contact, 
which shows that the granite overflowed the gneiss in a 
sheet or stream from some neighboring fissure. Other cases 
show the gneiss on top of the granites with equally sharp 
line of contact, which shows that there had been a second 
sedimentary deposit on top of the granite formed by the 
melting of a former bed of gneiss. Still other cases show 
the gneiss fading downwards and laterally also gradually 
into granite, which show that the second heating up was 
not sufficiently intense to melt up the whole mass of gneiss. 

This re-heating and melting of rock, already deposited, 
was most probably due to the fact that the tendency of the 
cooling process going on in the crust of the earth was to 
preserve uniform thickness of the crust as nearly as possible. 
Thus, if half a mile thickness of crust were scalped off an 
upland, and the materials washed down into an adjoining 
lowland, the earth’s crust measured through at the lowland 
would be one mile thicker than at the upland. As this 
cutting and filling proceeded, the heat of the interior would 
be equalizing matters by melting again the rocks of the 
lowland and cooling those of the upland. The gneiss rocks 


32 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


thus re-melted would lose their lines of stratification and 
crystallize into masses of granite rocks when they cooled, 
or they might be erupted through fissures in the overlying 
gneiss, and cool into sheets or dykes. 

SCHIST. 

This is substantially the gneiss after it has been washed 
down and deposited in new localities and beds. It has had 
much more trituration than gneiss, and has undergone addi¬ 
tional assorting, and is more carefully stratified. It is also 
somewhat laminated, owing to the fact that the foliated 
materials, such as mica, etc., are laid down flat, whereas in 
gneiss they jusc as often stand on edge as flatwise. 

SLATES. 

These are the finest of the stratified laminated rocks, the 
grains being rather more flat than round, and they are 
always laid down flat, thus giving a laminated structure to 
the slate. There are three slates among the primary rocks, 
the bottom one resting on the schists or gneiss being the 
micaceous slate, the second the talcose slate, and the third 
the chlorite slates. The whole three, together with the clay 
shale next spoken of, are the great gold-bearing rocks of the 
world. The mica slates are blue or gray, specked with 
minute particles of mica, the talcose and chlorites being 
greenish, the chlorite being the cleanest and brightest green. 
The talcose slate is the most auriferous, and feels greasy. 

SHALE. 

Shale is made up ot the finest rounded particles, and 
contains very few flattened particles. It is, therefore, very 
slightly laminated, and is nearly always made of clay with 
some sandy particles. The clay shales of the primaries 
generally rest on top of the slates 

QUARTZITE. 

This is the sandstone of the primary formation, and is 
composed of the silica washed out of such silicated ternary 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED IlOCKS. 


33 


minerals as have decomposed. It is the same as the sand¬ 
stone of the secondary and later formations, except that it 
is composed of more perfectly crystalline grains and has 
fewer impurities mixed with it. A variety called Itacolumite, 
or “elastic sandstone,” has the grains and the connecting 
cement arranged in ball-and-socket fashion, and sometimes 
with small grains of mica scattered through it. This gives 
it a certain flexibility; but as it does not spring back of its 
own accord, it ought not to be spoken of as elastic. It is 
the best natural stone for “inwalls” of furnaces, as its 
peculiar structure prevents expansion or contraction, the 
open joints taking or giving all the slack either way. 

MARBLE. 

This stone gives us our first glimpse of the great life- 
sustaining element, carbon, which element we will further 
discuss in the chapter on The Coal Measures. Marble is 
either calcite (carbonate of lime), or magnesite (carbonate of 
magnesia), or dolomite (carbonate of lime and magnesia), and 
its method of deposition is described further along under the 
head of limestone; but these limestones of the primaries 
are always highly crystallized into the marbles, as the result 
of heat under pressure and non-access of air, as with the 
other crystalline rocks of the primary times. 

As these primary rocks are the bottom sedimentary rocks, 
and are mostly overlaid by the secondary and tertiary rocks; 
we don’t know as much about them as we do about some 
other things. It is a fact that nearly all the mining (other 
than coal and iron mining) is done among the rocks of this 
formation, and the experts have accumulated volumes of 
information regarding the details of these much-twisted 
rocks; yet as these rocks constitute more than half the 
thickness of the earth’s explored crust, the observations yet 
made don’t reach very far into the mysteries. A serious 
difficulty is found in the want of any fossil remains of 
sufficient definiteness to enable us to distinguish the different 
rock beds, or identify periods of deposition. Fungoid and 


34 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED IlOCKS. 


infusorial life commenced during the later primary times, 
but did not develop variety. 

We have got so far along, however, as to have made four 
great divisions of primary time, and we call them the 
Laurentian, the Labradorian, the Montalban and the Huron- 
ian. The Laurentian, of about five miles in thickness (from 
the Labradorian down to the lowest explored point), forms 
the Laurentian Hills of Canada. These hills are supposed 
to be the oldest land now known above the sea level, or 
exposed to the air. They form the watershed between the 
streams flowing into the Hudson’s Bay and those of the St. 
Lawrence Basin. The Labradorian is found on the eastern 
end of the Laurention, which dips under, thus leaving the 
Labradorian rocks all the credit of making up the for¬ 
bidding and inhospitable coast cliffs of Labrador. The 
Montalban group makes up the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire, and is supposed to be of later age than the 
Labradorian, although the evidence is not complete. The 
Huronian is the upper group of the primaries, and most of 
the crystalline rocks of the Atlantic States are members of 
this group. The gold-bearing slates and the earliest iron 
ores are found among the Huronians. 

Although all four groups of these primaries cannot extend 
around the globe, yet no borings have yet been carried down 
through the bottom secondaries without cutting into some 
primary rock. They form the bed-rock of the American 
Continent. They are the country-rock of the Pacific Slope 
west of the Sierra Nevada, and of the Atlantic Slope east 
of the Blue Ridge. They are covered over in many places 
on the Pacific Slope by lava and other eruptive rocks in 
sheets and even mountains, and by tertiary beds of clays, 
sands, etc., without the intercalation of secondary rocks. 
On the Atlantic Slope they are obscured in several places by 
patches of later secondaries, and are covered up, along 
the immediate sea coasts from New York southward, by 
great plains of tertiary beds. The first rocky rapids in all 
the Atlantic rivers are formed by the primary rocks, which 
at these points dip under the tertiary plains. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


85 


The country from the Blue Ridge to the Sierra Nevada is 
broken up in many places by upheavals of primary rocks. 
Passing over the Cincinnati rise, as it is called, where the 
lower Silurian rocks are brought up and the primaries 
nearly break through, we will instance the Ozark upheaval, 
which, extending through Missouri and Arkansas into a 
corner of Indian Territory, furnishes the lead, zinc, dilver, 
iron and granite of those regions. The Lake Superior iron 
mines are among the primaries, the copper mines being in 
a great trap range where the igneous rock is forced up 
through the lower Silurian sandstones. The Black Hills are 
an upheaval of primary rocks, and there is a corresponding 
area in Western Texas. The great Rocky Mountains are of 
primary formation, but have been upheaved since the tertiary 
times, as they carry areas of well-marked tertiary beds on 
their backs. 

The rocks of the formations, i. e ., the sedimentary rocks, 
grow more and more homogeneous in composition as we 
leave the early, tumultuous days and approach the long 
periods of quietude of the later ages of the earth. In the 
early days the minerals were all scattered promiscuously 
throughout the various rocks, and they were consequently 
of very complex constitution. By the slow and quiet opera¬ 
tion of ages of weathering and watering, the silica has been 
dissolved out, separated and re-deposited in piles by itself as 
sandstone or quartzite; the aluminas and the limes and all 
the rest of the important, minerals have gone through 
Nature’s crushing and grinding mills, and have been sepa¬ 
rated and assorted according to size and weight by Nature’s 
sluice-ways and other hydraulic processes. 

Apart from the mechanical operations of water, there have 
been vast chemical forces at work to break up the prime 
minerals so that they could be assorted by hydraulic power, 
and it must be remembered that decomposition is as much a 
chemical process as composition. Consider only three prime 
minerals, feldspar, hornblende and augite. The first con¬ 
tains silica, alumina and an alkali, potash, soda, lime, etc. 


36 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Hornblende gives silica iron, alumina or other base, and 
augite gives silica alumina, lime, magnesia and iron. When 
the silica has been dissolved out of these and re-deposited as 
sandstone or quartzite, the other minerals are also released 
and at liberty to form new partnerships and build new 
rocks. A very respectable earth crust could be built up out 
of these three ternaries and the one binary, water. 


AQUEOUS ROCKS. 

We know very much more about these rocks than we do 
about the primaries, for we can get at the edges of these all 
around whole areas. They occur in spots (to be sure the 
spots are as big as islands and almost as continents some¬ 
times), while the primaries extend all around the globe. 
They are several miles in thickness, but that don’t count, as 
we can get at the bottom of them and at the top too, and at 
pretty much any intermediate point, but we know nothing 
about the bottom of the primaries, and very little, compara¬ 
tively, about intermediate points. The top surface of the 
primaries is a surface composed of wrinkled and upturned 
edges of strata upon which the calm and placid beds of the 
secondaries are laid down flat, thus showing sharp division 
lines. 

During the long and quiet intervals between the cata¬ 
clysms, some very important operations are going on, and 
the features, in minor detail, of the face of the earth are 
worked into present shape by hydraulic processes. Look at 
an ordinary hillside covered thickly with stones and small 
boulders. The inexperienced says to himself that, being so 
thick on the surface, the stones must be still thicker below, 
and as they are fragments of pure feldspar, worth four 
dollars per ton, he digs extensively into the hill and finds 
the stones very few and far between. 

Having bought his experience, he goes into some other 
business, and occupies his odd moments in marveling greatly 



BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


87 


about the stones, until some geologist tells him that the 
stones he found on the surface were once very thinly distrib¬ 
uted throughout a mass of clay some hundreds of feet 
thick which formerly was on top of the present surface, and 
that the rains have gradually washed out the clay and soil 
from under the stones, thus lowering the surface to its 
present level and causing the stones to accumulate more and 
more thickly on the lowering surface, while the lighter and 
finer clay was washed down into the valley. 

This cutting down process is going on more or less rapidly 
everywhere above the water level; very slowly on forest 
lands and on well-kept grass lands and other lands well 
roofed in by turf or moss, but very rapidly and destructively 
where the land is cultivated or laid aside as worn out. For 
example sake, we will cite James River, which in Captain 
John Smith’s time was described as beautifully clear and 
limpid, but which is now muddy for eleven months a year. 
The tidewater portions of the valley of this river are rapidly 
shoaling into meadows overgrown with marsh grass. The 
soil to make these meadows and muddy this water is washed 
down from the cleared lands and old broom-sedge fields up 
the valley, where they rarely fertilize wornout lands and 
sod them down to grass, but either clear new land or 
emigrate, and the owners of the rich tidewater meadows use 
them principally for snipe pastures. New owners will learn 
to dyke and ditch them some day. 

Let us look at another American river, the Mississippi. 
The engineers who have been taking care of its several 
mouths have measured over and over again its discharge per 
year of water and also of solid matter carried in suspension 
and dropped in the Gulf of Mexico where the river current 
slackens and stops. This solid matter or silt amounts to 
enough each year to fill a hole one mile square and two 
hundred and sixty-eight feet deep. This is a layer one foot 
deep spread out over two hundred and sixty-eight square 
miles, or a small county each year, and it would cover the 
whole State of Pennsylvania one foot deep in one hundred 


38 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


and seventy-live years. The face of the country shows that 
once the mouth of the Mississippi was above Cairo, and at 
the head of a long, narrow bay extending down to the Gulf.. 
This bay was about one thousand miles long, and about one 
hundred miles wide at the mouth, and it has all been filled 
up and rendered fit for corn, cotton and sugar plantations 
by the same processes that are now shoaling the estuary of 
James River. The Mississippi silt has been washed off from 
the surface of twenty States and Territories covering an 
expanse of a round million square miles. 

The tidal currents of the ocean and the lashings of the 
surf are continually cutting out sand and silt along the 
coast lines of the continents and islands, and re-depositing 
the materials elsewhere, thus forming new beds in new 
places at the expense of old beds in old places. 

All lake and sea bottoms are continually being added to 
by the dropping of the shells and stems, etc., of infusoria. 
Under the microscope a drop of water is seen to contain 
numerous little scraps of vitality called diatoms, spicules, 
wheels, spores, etc., and each individual scrap has a shell or 
skeleton or stem made out of matters such as lime and silica 
held in solution in the water. These shells, etc., are all 
deposited on the bottom of the lake or sea when the scraps 
die, and the rivers are all the time washing down more lime, 
silica, etc., to provide shells for more scraps, and so on. The 
great limestone beds are all the result of this series of pro¬ 
cesses, and one kind of limestone, called oolite, is composed 
of round shells looking like fish eggs, ranging in size from a 
shad egg to salmon eggs. 

When we consider that only one-fourth of the earth’s 
surface is dry land, and that these submarine deposits are 
going on all the time over the other three-fourths, we can form 
some idea of the amount of work that is constantly going on. 
The process of hardening these beds of clay, silt, shells, etc., 
into solid rocks is simply one of long-continued compression, 
with occasionally some action similar to the “ setting ” of 
mortar or cement. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


39 


The absorption of water into the texture of the rocks is 
going on all the time, too. A familiar example of this is seen 
in the absorption of water by caustic lime when being 
slaked, and yet the lime, when not overslaked, appears to be 
as dry as before. Brown iron ore, called limonite, was 
formed by the washing down and solution of the red iron 
ore, after which it was re-deposited with fourteen per cent, 
of water inclosed in it, and when this ore is roasted the 
water is driven off, leaving it red ore again. 

Water thus absorbed is called water of hydration or of 
crystallization, and it is estimated that fully one-sixth of all 
the water belonging to our globe has already been locked up 
in the rocks by these processes. How much has been locked 
up by the process of watering railroad and other stocks is not 
yet estimated. 

The secondary rockS are looked at with different degrees 
of interest by different people. Owing to the continuing 
hydraulic assorting processes of Nature, the composition of 
the different rock beds grew simpler as time advanced, while 
the more peaceful condition of things permitted the varieties 
of life to multiply enormously. The gold and silver miner 
has little use for level banks and beds of rocks full of fossils, 
while the mining speculator has still less use for fossils in 
banks, as they won’t lend money on his stocks. The coal 
and iron miner feels at home among the level homogeneous 
banks, while the biologist blesses the fossils, and works 
lovingly among them in search of the missing link. We 
will, therefore, describe these rocks and refer the reader to 
the Geological Column. 

* SANDSTONE. 

This is derived from the primary quartzite which has been 
washed down and deposited in new beds during secondary 
times, and became hardened by time and pressure. The 
sandstones are found in beds all the way up at intervals 
throughout the whole secondary series, and the sands con¬ 
stitute at least three-fourths of all the mass of materials in 
this formation. The principal differences to be seen among 


40 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


the beds are variations in size of grain. There are four 
great plates ot sandstone between the top of the primaries 
and the bottom of the great coal measures. The Potsdam 
sandstone lies on the primaries and forms the crest and 
western slope of the Blue Ridge. The Medina sandstone 
is the second, and forms the crest and western slope of 
North Mountain. The Oriskany is the third great sand¬ 
stone, and forms the crest and western slope of Capon 
Mountain and others on that line of upheaval. The mill¬ 
stone grit is the fourth great sandstone, and forms the base 
of the coal measures. The Mahoning sandstone is the plate 
that divides the coal measures into upper and lower coals. 

These great sandstone plates give the topography to the 
country they traverse, as they are the hardest rocks and 
wash down the least, while the softer limestones, slates and 
shales, in between them, wash out rapidly, and thus form 
valleys, leaving the sandstones to cap the ridges and protect 
them against too rapid denudation. 

This region west of the Blue Ridge is a magnificent illus¬ 
tration of the action of upheaval as shown in Nature’s grand 
and original performance of upheaving the Blue Ridge and 
the primary region east of it. She drove it up like a wedge 
from below, and she has squeezed up into great mountain 
wrinkles all the country between the Blue Ridge and the 
Allegheny Mountains. It is estimated that if the seventy to 
eighty miles of mountain and valley between those two 
ridges were flattened down into level plain, they would 
cover at least one hundred and twenty miles The •wrinkling 
has been so powerful that in many places the sedimentary 
beds stand on edge, and indeed at times they lean back¬ 
wards. 

LIMESTONE. 

This is simply the re- deposited debris of the marbles of 
the primary formation, supplemented by the work of marine 
animals and vegetables of the secondary ages. It is prob¬ 
able that those beds in which the most fossils are found are 
the ones formed by the slow building of the infusoria during 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


41 


secondary times, while those of larger grain and fewer 
fossils may have been made of materials derived from 
washing down the primary marbles. This latter material is 
most apt to be deposited near the shore line of the ancient 
seas and to have sand and clays mixed with it; while the 
limestone of the secondary age would be formed in deep, still 
water, and would thus be of finest grain unmixed with any¬ 
thing but fossils. 

CHALK. 

This is given a subdivision all to itself, as it characterizes 
and gives name to a whole group of secondary beds, viz.: 
the Cretaceous, which is the upper group of the secondaries. 
The earlier limestones had time and pressure enough to 
pack them down and harden them, but these chalks, which 
are substantially the same materials, have not yet had the 
advantages of the older rocks. The sounding apparatus of 
recent exploring vessels have brought up from the deepest 
sea bottoms yet found quantities of semi-fluid chalk, show¬ 
ing that the infusoria in the sea water of to-day conform to 
the habits of their ancestors in the matter of sepulture. 

COAL. 

This, although the least in quantity of all the secondary 
rocks, except fire-clay, is very much the greatest in impor¬ 
tance among the secondary or any other rocks, but as it will 
be treated more fully in its place in the chapter on The Coal 
Measures, it will be passed over here, with the recommenda¬ 
tion that the reader study its position in the Geological 
Column. 

SLATE AND SHALE. 

The slates and shales of the secondaries are of the same 
construction as those described among the primaries, but 
they differ in condition, those of the primaries having been 
severely cooked by the early heat and slightly crystallized, 
while those of the secondaries have not been under fire, 
and are only compacted by long pressure. In the anthracite 
coal regions, however, the slates and shales have been 


42 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


slightly heated, at the same time the hydrogen was being 
driven out of the coal* 

The secondary rocks form the country rock of the Missis¬ 
sippi basin, and they are also found in areas east of the Blue 
Ridge of the Appalachian Mountain range. The eastern 
edge of the Potsdam sandstone caps the Blue Ridge from 
near Harrisburg down past Harper’s Ferry and on through 
Virginia and the Carolinas, thence past Cartersville, in 
Georgia, to the Coosa River, in Alabama, near the Selma 
and Rome Railroad bridge. In West North Carolina and 
Southern Virginia this stone has been terribly tossed up 
and broken through by the upheavals of the primaries, but 
it gets control again and passes under the valley of East 
Tennessee. 

The secondary rocks extend westward beyond the Missis¬ 
sippi to the Rocky Mountains, broken, of course, where the 
before-named primary upheavals come up through, but the 
further west they extend the thinner they get. Rock beds 
which are hundreds of feet thick in the Appalachian Moun¬ 
tains are represented in Missouri by feather-edged beds of 
but few feet in thickness, while at the foot of the Rockies 
many of the beds are missing altogether. 

There are detached areas of secondary rocks east of the 
Blue Ridge, which, although small, are of great value, for 
these areas furnish all the brownstone used in'building in 
New York and other cities in the Eastern States. The stone 
comes from the Triassic beds of the secondaries, which are 
found in troughs in the primary rocks, all the way from 
Nova Scotia down to Georgia, the beds, however, not being 
continuous. The northern slope of Nova Scotia is of this 
Triassic age. Slialer’s quarries, in Connecticut, furnish 
nearly all of this stone used in Boston, Providence, New 
York, New Haven and Hartford. The red soils of New 
Jersey are underlaid with it. Parts of the Susquehanna, 
near York, and all the Monocacy valley are of this forma¬ 
tion. The Grant-Seneca quarries are in this, and the 
Virginia Midland Railroad runs across many miles of it. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS 


43 


The gray sandstones in which the Richmond coals are 
found are of this age. The Deep River and Dan River coals 
of North Carolina are in these rocks, and this writer thinks 
he has identified them in South Carolina and in Georgia at 
several points. 

TERTIARIES. 

These beds are rarely hard enough to be called rocks. 
They cover great areas of country in the basins between the 
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, and also along 
the Pacific coast where they have eruptive rocks above or 
below them and all through them. In many places they 
have been so burnt by heat from eruptive rocks that they 
are often mistaken for older rocks. The “ Bad Lands ” of 
the Upper Missouri River country are of tertiary formation, 
and they appear to have been used as cemeteries by the 
tertiary animals of that region, for they are packed full of 
skeletons, and have furnished more links in the chain of 
evolution than all the rest of the world yet known. 

On the Atlantic side .the coast lands are all tertiary, from 
the Hudson River around to the Rio Grande, and they 
extend inwards up to the line of the “ Sand Hills,” which 
line marks the boundary of the ancient coast, the “ Hills ” 
being the ancient sand dunes blown up by the winds, just as 
they are in Southern France and many other coasts, to-day. 
The fact that this line of sand dunes coincides for many 
hundred miles with the line of the first rocky rapids in the 
rivers, is corroborative evidence. Wherever there are sand 
dunes they are always on the line of the rapids in the 
Southern States. Many portions of this great tertiary plain, 
between the sand dunes and the sea, are covered by swamps 
and drift clays and by river washings, such as the great 
Mississippi bottom-land country, all of which are quater¬ 
nary. 

Clay. 

The clay of the tertiaries differs in no very important 
respect from the clays of other formations, and will be 
referred to again among industrial minerals. 


44 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


Sand. 

The sands of the tertiaries are generally finer and purer 
than those of earlier deposition, as they have undergone 
more washing and assorting, and are therefore better fitted 
for man’s use in the building arts and for making glass. 
There are some halfi-hardened sandstones among these beds 
which are composed of fine, clean, sharp-pointed sand, 
which crumbles easily under the fingers, and in which the 
beds contain grains ot uniform size, which are especially 
useful. 

Gravel. 

The gravels of the tertiaries are the same as other gravels, 
but they are in such great quantity that they are a very 
prominent feature, and are used for ballasting railroads, 
surfacing turnpike roads, and many other purposes. A large, 
well-located gravel pit is a valuable piece of property. 

Marl. 

This is the lime rock of the tertiary formation, and is to 
this formation what chalk is to the upper secondary, lime¬ 
stone to the lower secondary, and marble to the primaries. 
It is soft yet, but if we pile a few miles of new rocks on top 
of it, and wait say a few million of years, it will guarantee 
any required degree of hardness. It is the work of those 
tireless infusoria, who go on locking up carbon, without 
asking themselves when there will be no more unappro¬ 
priated carbon to lock up. There are marls which contain 
phosphoric acid combined with lime, and these are great 
marls for fertilizing purposes. They are generally granular 
in texture and greenish in color, and are therefore called 
“ Green Sand Marls.’ The phosphoric acid or phosphate of 
lime is supposed to come from the great deposits of bones 
and fish remains found in and about these marls. There are 
other green marls which contain iron sulphate, and as these 
sour the land the amateur fertilizing farmer had better look 
sharp. The writer has known, however, of several cases in 
the Patuxent regions of Maryland, in which this sour marl 
was spread and killed everything, but in the third year 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


45 


magnificent crops were produced, and there have been four 
successive crops since, all good ones too, from which it 
would seem that exposure to the weather decomposed the 
iron sulphate and released the sulphuric acid, which in 
turn attacked the lime and formed plaster. 

# QUATERNARIES. 

These beds are the most recently formed, and they are 
still being formed over the three-fourths of the earth’s crust 
which is under water. The sands and gravels and marls of 
this formation and the ordinary clays, too, are substantially 
the same as those of the tertiaries, and need no special 
mention, but there is a clay called 
Drift Clay 

Or boulder clay. It is an irregular and unstratified mass of 
miscellaneous materials, mostly yellow clay, with boulders 
and other rounded fragments scattered all through it. It is 
supposed to be deposits of pulverized rocks and formations 
which were ground off by the ice during the last Glacial 
period. There are portions of .this continent which are 
covered for hundreds of square miles by deposits of these 
clays. Many rivers emptying into the St. Lawrence and the 
Great Lakes cut through great hills of drift. The Ontonagon 
River running into Lake Superior is a fine example of this, 
as it runs for many miles between banks, often a hundred 
feet high, composed entirely of drift clay and boulders. 

One theory advanced to account for the presence of this 
clay and boulders is that the orbit of the earth around the 
sun being elliptical and constantly changing, it may have 
become so elongated as to get out of center with the sun, 
and thus produce shortening of exposure of northern hemi¬ 
sphere each year to the sun’s heat. This would cause an 
accumulation of ice over the northern half of the globe, 
which ice would expand and grow southwardly, carrying 
with it the stones frozen into its mass. These stones would do 
just as in modern icebergs and glaciers, and thus cut out 
grooves and striae on the surfaces of the rocks they passed 


46 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


over. As the orbital distortion corrected itself the heat came 
back, the ice melted and dropped the boulders, the floods of 
water from the melting ice scoured out all the clays, etc., 
from earlier formations and re-deposited them in great un¬ 
stratified hills of unassorted clay, and things got straight 
again. 

All the hills and mountains south of Hudson’s Bay, down 
to Pennsylvania and east of the Mississippi River, except 
Mt. Washington, show the grooves on their very tops, 
showing that the ice went clear over them. Mt. Washington 
only shows them cut deeply on her sides, nearly up to the 
top. 

Another suggested cause for this change of climate is that 
as the earth staggers on its axis (like a humming top asleep), 
making a complete stagger and recovery once in about 
twenty-five thousand years, it would thus incline its North 
Pole away from the Sun for long intervals. This theory can 
be called rather diaphanous, as the exposure and non-ex¬ 
posure would seem to be about equal under the proposed 
arrangement. 

The most probable theory advanced is that the changes 
in the cooling Sun were accompanied by the evolution of a 
hazy gaseous envelope which shut off temporarily some of 
the Sun’s heat, and produced the glacial effects, and that 
this hazy gas was afterwards re-absorbed or combined with 
something else so as to become clear again. 

Soil. 

Soil is the top covering of that portion of the earth that 
is above water. This is a general statement, but there are 
of course particular spots where the soil of uplands has 
been scraped off, which we will not allow to count this time. 
Soil is the result of comminution and decomposition of 
minerals combined with decomposition of vegetable and 
animal matter. Soils are also further enriched and com¬ 
minuted by passing through the bodies of earth-worms, and 
this to a much greater extent than had been thought possible 
previous to Darwin’s book calling attention to it. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


47 


In the spring of 1882 the writer observed a path across a 
common at the village of Avalon, near Baltimore. The 
common was covered with grass kept short by the village 
cows, and the path was so dotted with worm casts that he 
cut a pasteboard one foot square and failed to put it down 
on the path anywhere without touching a worm cast. He 
searched for an hour over the rest of the common and found 
the grass sod was dotted the same way. A rain spread the 
casts over the ground, and in twenty-four hours they were 
renewed just as plentifully, Six times in one month was 
this repeated. It is within bounds to state that if this rate 
of deposit is kept up for three months in each year, for fifty 
years, it would add one inch of soil to the the surface of that 
common. 


FOSSIL EARMARKS. 

Now that we have got up to the top of the earth’s crust, 
we will study the remains of the organized life that has 
been growing more complex all the time that we have been 
assorting the rocks into more simple varieties. The general 
characters of the fossil remains change with the ages, which 
correspond to whole groups of rocks, not with single beds. 
In other words, the fossils correspond to the ages, not the 
characters, of rocks, and the rocks are arbitrarily grouped 
by man to correspond to the changes of the fossils. This is 
because the life was substantially the same at any one time, 
whereas the rocks being laid down in that same age, and in 
which the remains of the life were being deposited, were 
here of limestone and there of coal, and again of sandstone, 
and so on. 

There are some sixty odd thousand species of fossil 
remains now known and described by the palaeontologists, 
but the size of this volume will not let us speak of more 
than the general groups into which they are divided, and 
which give names to the ages. Each age thus named is the 



48 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


period daring which that type of life attained its greatest 
development. It can, in general, he said that the life thus 
distinctive of any age had its beginning in the age preced¬ 
ing, and that it declined in the age next succeeding that of 
its greatest development. Types of life have declined, but 
have never perished, although many species have disap¬ 
peared. The ages of life are as follows: 

AGE OF FUNGI. 

This was the Eozoic Age, or Dawn of Life, and happened 
along during the later primaries. The occurrence of marbles 
among the primaries shows that there must have been some 
sort of low vegetable growth to secrete carbon out of the air 
and transmit it to the water where it was taken up by the 
infusoria and used for shells, etc. Possibly some form of 
seaweed floating around was the first life, and almost 
microscopic in size. The rocks of the primary series have 
been so transformed by heat that well-defined fossils are 
burnt out, although Eozoon is being found increasingly. 

AGE OF MOLLUSKS. 

These chaps were shell-fish, creatures that have their 
bones on the outside of them, where they do duty as skele¬ 
tons, and as houses, and as armor. Our modern crabs, 
oysters and others of that ilk are remaining species of this 
type. There were big snails and sea conchs and worms 
covered with jointed armor made of rings of shell. These 
shell-fish held possession of affairs on this world all through 
the Silurian age. 

AGE OF FISHES. 

This was the age of the fish who lived on the infusoria, 
and on each other, and on shell-fish, which they cracked up 
just as our sturgeon do to this day. Many of them had the 
floors and roofs of their mouths paved with flat-headed teeth 
set as closely as the hob-nails on a miner’s boot sole, all 
properly arranged for crunching oysters, etc. 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


49 


AGE OF COAL PLANTS. 

This age followed the fish, and appears to have been a 
time of peace and plenty, when vegetation of enormous 
vigor grew luxuriantly, died properly, and carried down 
into the ground with it great quantities of carbon. The 
carbon stayed there and mineralized until man came along 
and found it would burn. He called it coal, dug it out, 
organized companies, swindled widows, melted iron and 
made war with it. Great civilizer. 

AGE OF REPTILES 

Reptiles include lizards, crocodiles, alligators, turtles, 
frogs, toads, terrapins, sea serpents and see snakes. These 
interesting creatures were on top all through the Triassic, 
Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and had a long lease of 
power. There were lizards, called Saurians, fifty feet long 
and bigger round than a sugar hogshead. Their legislatures 
invented Reptile Funds. 

AGE OF MAMMALS. 

These are the creatures that suckle their young,—bats in 
the air, whales in the sea, elephants and others on land. 
They appear to have got a start in the top of the second¬ 
aries, to have increased beyond all reason in the tertiaries, 
as regards quantity, but their choicest specimens were 
produced about the end of the tertiary and beginning of the 
quaternary. Some most preposterous creatures were gotten 
up but their preposterosity consisted chiefly in their great 
size. It would take about two-and a-lialf of Barnum’s 
Jumbo to make one boss mammoth. They had an elk in 
Ireland which would cut up into a whole family of our best 
bull moose. The great cave bear would whip a four-in-hand 
team of California grizzlies. The British Lion of those days 
was a tiger who had incisor teeth eight inches long, and the 
American Eagle was a lion built on the same magnificent 
scale. The lions and tigers of the present day are mere 
kittens in comparison. 


50 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


But the boss mammalian was still to come. He makes a 
little drove all by himself, and some writers have gone to 
the length of giving him a whole age to himself, the “Age of 
Man.” We cannot consent to this, for good reasons. One 
is that he is only a mammal, after all, and has not yet 
sufficiently differentiated himself from his relatives to justify 
such a distinction; another is that this differentiation is still 
going on and man has not yet reached his culmination. If 
ive are on hand when his high level has been traversed and 
he strikes the down grade we will revise this chapter and 
allot him the necessary space. 

The regular order of things provides that the life type 
shall originate in one age, culminate in the next age, and 
begin to decline in the ne*t. Man has only been here a 
short time, and he is still in the age of his origin. His cul¬ 
mination will come in the next age, and his decline in the 
next. What will be the type of life that will succeed him on 
this globe ? There is already more essential difference be¬ 
tween an American or English naturalist and a native of 
Terra del Fuego or Central Australia than there is between 
the latter and the gorilla and chimpanzee. 


VEINS AND DEPOSITS. 

Let us consider that a portion of the earth’s crust has been 
humped up in a long ridge. Now a cross section of the 
ridge would show the rock strata arched upwards across the 
crown of the ridge and arched downwards across the foot 
slopes of the hill, where the strata curve back again to their 
former level. If the upheaval was sufficiently powerful, the 
rock strata would be cracked across into wedge-shaped 
fissures through the crowns of all the arches, but the fissures 
in the up-bent arch would have the wedge butt upwards, 
and the down-bent arches would show the wedges with their 
butts turned downwards. Now let us suppose these fissures 
to have been filled with melted rock which had cooled and 



BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


51 


probably coarsely crystallized, and we will call these in¬ 
truded masses of eruptive rock, dykes. 

Again, it may be that the eruptive rock has not had pres¬ 
sure enough to w r holly or even partially fill the fissures, and 
that they have been open for ages but gradually choking up 
by deposits crystallizing on the walls, formed by the passage 
of mineral vapors or mineral waters. These deposits would 
form in layers or crusts, one on top of another, and of 
various compositions, as the heat or force varied. In course 
of time the fissures would narrow and finally choke up, and 
the whole affair would then be called a vein. The walls of 
the fissures would be irregular, which would give rise to 
chimneys or openings, through which the mineral vapors or 
waters would rush faster after the narrower portions were 
choked up, and thus give rise to more sameness of constitu¬ 
tion at these points. 

Again, the fissures might be filled by the percolation of 
mineralized water through the wall rocks, or by water from 
the surface which would deposit its minerals on the walls, 
and the fall of portions of the wall rocks or the washing in 
of surface trash helps to fill up the fissure with materials 
that are not needed by miners. 

Sometimes the fissures are mere surface cracks formed by 
the cooling down and shrinkage of hot rocks, which are 
analagous to the shrinkage cracks formed in mud deposits 
left high and dry by the subsidence of a freshet. These 
cracks get filled up by deposits of mineral matters crystal¬ 
lized or precipitated out of impregnated waters, which may 
find their way in from above or below ; or may concentrate 
in the cracks by exudation from the sides of the cooling 
rocks. 

When this class of vein is small and cuts through the 
rocks in many directions it is called a ribbon vein, and fine 
examples of it are often seen in blue limestone cut in all 
directions by criss-cross veins of white calcite. When these 
veins are large they are called segregated or lenticular veins, 
and they are the principal gold-bearing free-quartz veins, 
but they do no carry very much sulphide ore 


52 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


These lenticular veins are found sometimes several miles 
in length, forty or more feet wide at the middle and running 
to a point at each end, giving them the ground-plan shape 
of a lenticle. This shape is all right for ground plan, but it 
is very objectionable when applied to the cross section, for 
then the vein runs down to a feather edge and “ peters out ’’ 
in depth as well as length. 

Whether these segregated or lenticular veins are really 
formed by the shrinkage of cooling rocks, or whether they 
are the wedge-shaped fissures of the up-bent arches before 
mentioned, is an open question, and in such cases it is well 
to assume that possibly both causes had a hand in the effect. 
It is, however, a fact that very often heavy granite or trap 
dykes are found paralleling these lenticular veins on either 
side and this would support the view of the lenticles being the 
fissures at the crown of an arch, while the dykes were the 
fissures in the down-turned arches of the foot-hills. We 
could very easily determine this if it were not for the fact 
that Mother Nature very often so scoops out a hill as to 
make a hollow of it, and fills up old hollows to look like 
hills. 

It is to be observed that while the lenticular veins peter 
out in depth, just as wedge-shaped fissures, point downward, 
ought to do, the dykes widen out in depth just as wedge- 
shaped fissures, point upward, ought to do; and this brings 
us to the point that these heavy dykes, widening downward, 
are generally the fissures which contain the sulphide ores in 
greatest strength and variety. The dykes become veins 
when the contents of the fissures change from barren, erup¬ 
tive rock, to vein stone and mineral. These are the big 
mines of silvbr, copper, lead, zinc and iron sulphide ores, 
and what gold they contain is mixed with the sulphides of 
other metals and came up with them from below. The gold 
that is in the quartz-filled lenticular veins most likely came 
in from above after having been released from sulphurous 
company by decomposition of sulphide ores out of the 
other fissures 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


53 


There is a very -peculiar class of mineral deposit among 
the silver districts of our Western Territories which appears 
to be the passage or connection of a fissure with a Cavern 
in limestone, and the subsequent filling of both fissure and 
cavern with sulphide ores. Sometimes the fissure is a 
mere ribbon as to size, but the cavern contains millions of 
dollars worth of ore. Such an affair was the Little Emma 
mine—of great productiveness, but rascally reputation. A 
little stringlet of ore was all that led the proprietor to the 
right place. 

The ore deposit called a gash vein is really nothing but 
a flattened cavern in one kind or bed of rock, generally 
limestone. The flatness can be either vertical, horizontal 
or diagonal when referred to the stratification of the rock. 
Sometimes these veins will be found with apparently no 
communication by means of strings of ore, but close observ¬ 
ation will generally detect some open joint or other fissure 
through which the ore was charged in. 

There is also a deposit called a contact vein, which is 
generally found between a bed of eruptive rock above, and 
a bed of sedimentary rock below. This is the approved 
form of vein at Leadville, where the carbonates of lead and 
iron containing silver chlorites rest on limestone and are 
covered by an overflow of porphyry. Very many theories 
are now under discussion about the methods of the depo¬ 
sition of these ores, but pending the decision of the 
problem “how it got in,” the practical Leadvillians are 
rapidly showing the world all about “how to get it out,” 
and how to sell stocks on it after it has disappeared. 
These contact veins, having no side w'alls like fissure veins, 
admit of twisting and turning the drifts underground to¬ 
wards all points, and thereby the miner takes out nine- 
tenths of all the ore. The other one-tenth is left standing 
in the walls of the drifts, and is used to convince inno¬ 
cent investors that the blocks of rock between the drifts 
are solid ore. The result is that the empty mine often‘sells 
for more than the full mine was worth. 


54 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED ROCKS. 


The courts of Colorado are now ruling that these contact 
veins are not really “ veins,” as they do not cut through the 
stratifications, and that they are really beds between other 
beds The miners are also beginning to call them by a new 
name, viz.: blanket lodes. 

Concerning the question of the increase or decrease of 
mineralization of veins as depth is attained, there is an abso¬ 
lute certainty that the tendency is properly towards increasing 
with depth, as the whole earth weighs up to a specific 
gravity of 5.2, according to the astronomers, whereas the 
rocky crust averages only half of that. This means that the 
core of the globe is composed of very much heavier materials 
than the crust, and the metals are the only substances 
known which are heavier than the rocks. 

No mining yet done by man has gone deep enough to get 
below the influence of local causes, due to movements of the 
earth’s crust, so as to reach down into this metalliferous 
globe core, and it may be that some millions of years must 
elapse before the globe cools down sufficiently to permit of 
it. The increasing heat of the rocks, due to the depth, 
and the heat arising from oxidation of vein rock, due to the 
access of air, have rendered it almost impossible to carry the 
Comstock workings any deeper. 

It would seem that the class of veins most likely to lead 
into this metalliferous earth core would be those which have 
the point of the wedge upwards and which widen down¬ 
wards. In a district which has undergone no very great 
amount of denudation or scouring since the ridges were 
upheaved, these veins will be found among the foot-hills, or 
along the lower portion of the sides of the ridges, and 
striking parallel to the ridges, and they are more likely to 
carry a preponderance of silver than of gold. The “ blow¬ 
out ” veins on top of the ridges generally carry more gold 
than silver, and get narrower as they get deeper, and they 
also get richer with depth, principally through the concen¬ 
tration of the same amount of metal in a smaller amount of 
vein stone. There is also the additional reason, that the 


BOTTOM FACTS AND BED BOCKS. 


metals being heavier than the vein stone they would avail 
of every disturbance to shake themselves down a little 
further every time, whether the vein stone happened to be in 
liquid, molten or solid condition. 

When we reflect upon the fact that any injection of liquid 
or vapor from below towards the surface, accompanied by 
an upheaval of a ridge and the Assuring of the upturned and 
down turned rock arches, would be simply the action of a 
gigantic ‘ squirt,” we will see reasons why the squirted sub¬ 
stance, cut off by the closing of the Assure bottoms under 
the crown of the centre arch, should break a passage through 
to the side Assures or come through to the surface at new 
points further up the ridge slopes. This action would 
account for the presence of bodies of valuable mineral in the 
country rock entirely outside of the rock walls of the regular 
Assures, and the breaking down of masses of wall rock. 
Some of the greatest ‘'Bonanzas” of modern times are 
found thus situated out in the country rock beyond the 
vein walls. 


THE COAL MEASURES, 


Carbon—Bituminous Coal, Anthracite, Cannel, Splint 
or Block, Lignite, Peat, Coke. Position—False 
Coals, Lower Coals, Upper Coals, Triassic Coals, 
Tertiary Coals. 


CARBON. 

This, the great heat and life-sustaining element, appears to 
have been one of the latest of the overhead gases in getting 
down to the crust of the earth. The old conundrum, as to 
whether the chicken preceded the egg or the egg the chicken, 
is paralled in modern times by the analogous one of whether 
carbon preceded life or life preceded carbon on this world. 
Certain it is that wherever we find life or the remains of life 
we also find carbon, and wherever we find carbon we find 
life or its remains. , 

There is a small percentage of carbonic acid still remaining 
in the air. Vegetation is continually absorbing it, and a 
portion of it is being continually breathed back again into 
the air by animals who live on vegetables, or on other ani¬ 
mals who live on vegetables. Another portion gets back 
into the air by the death and decomposition of animals and 
vegetables, but a large portion gets permanently locked up 
in the tissues of the earth’s crust by being mineralized into 
coal, and by being turned into limestone by the insects and 
infusoria, as mentioned in the chapter on Bed Rocks. 




THE COAL MEASURES. 


57 


Within recent centuries, man has begun to assist his 
Mother Nature in this process of returning carbon to the 
air by burning coal and limestone in increasing quantities, 
and thereby prolonging his lease of life on this planet. 

The crystalline marbles of the primary formations con¬ 
tain the earliest known carbon, and the graphite of the 
same formations came next. After the great and good sub¬ 
stance once reached the earth’s surface, it continued to come 
down in increasing quantities up to the beginning of the 
Carboniferous age. Then its rate of descent remained about 
stationary throughout that age, and has decreased ever 
since, until now we have not much more left to come and 
go upon. 

It is thought that at the setting in of the Carboniferous 
ages the regions now constituting the coal fields were great 
level swamps pretty much filled up with the sands and silts 
of the previous rather quiet Devonian times. These swamps 
were covered with a luxuriant growth of peat moss, urged 
into extraordinary rapidity of growth by a great quantity of 
carbonic acid in the air of those days. A few thousand 
years of such growth, and then a slight subsidence of the 
land, and a period of submergence during which the waters 
laid down a series of sands and silts in layers, and then an 
uprising of the land again, appears to have been the order of 
the procession. This, repeated many times, and then the 
lapse of some millions of years, in order to give time for 
the peat to mineralize into coal, and the sands and silts 
to harden into slates, shales and clays, would produce 
exactly what we now find in all our great coal fields. 

We should expect that coals produced in this way would 
vary in composition fully as much as other rocks. The peat 
bogs are liable at any time to have slight overflows from 
local freshets, and these will deposit layers of sand or silt in 
some spots and not in others. These will be found in the 
coal as streaks of shale or slate which thin out and disappear 
further on. Sometimes the sand or other trash will be 
mixed in with the peat moss, and this results in sandy coal. 


58 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


Then again, more hydrogen will be locked up in the coal in 
one moss than another. One portion may be afterwards 
better covered up by hills of new rocks than others, or an 
intrusion of melted rock or upheaval of mountains may burn 
out some of the hydrogen or other constituents, and thus 
make anthracite or natural coke in portions of the coal field. 

The normal coal appears to be about what is called bitu¬ 
minous coal, and is best represented by the coal of the great 
Pittsburgh bed; all other coals appearing to be either incom¬ 
plete or else complete coal altered by heat. 

BITUMINOUS COAL. 

This is the great coal of the world, and well it deserves its 
place, for it contains everything that goes to make up coal, 
and can be altered by man so as to suit any of his special 
purposes. A descriptive list of its best variety is about as 
follows: 

Gravity.1.1 to 1.3 

Hardness...1.0 to 1.5 

Carbon.85 p. ct. 

Hydrogen. 5 p. ct. 

Lustre, sub-vitreous; clearness, opaque; color, black; 
feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, seemingly 
great but really slight, as its square breakage is owing not to 
crystallization, but to jointed structure; fracture, even; 
texture, granular, cubic. 

Very often there is an iridescence on the surfaces of 
blocks, and the coal is then called “ peacock coal.” This is the 
composition of normal coal, but hardly any two beds con¬ 
tain coal of exactly similar constitution. The differences, 
however, among the coals of any one age and locality are 
not very large, and are generally only just enough to make 
one bed give the best gas coal, another the best coking coal, 
another the best blacksmithing coal, and another the best 
steam coal, and so on. 

An important feature in these coals is their power of 
resisting slaking by exposure to the weather. Coals that 


... f 

Water.3 p. ct. 

Ash.2 p. ct. 










THE COAL MEASURES 


59 


will slake, or that will crumble when handled, must be used 
where mined, and are, therefore, least valuable 


ANTHRACITE. 


This is bituminous coal which has been metamorphosed 
by heat and pressure, which have burned out some of its 
hydrogen and compacted it. Its descriptive list is as follows: 


Gravity......1.5 to 1.8 

Hardness.......2.3 to 2.6 

Carbon.93.0 p. ct. 

Hydrogen. 1.5 p. ct. 


Oxygen.....1.5 p. ct. 

Water.2.0 p. ct. 

Ash. 2.0 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous; clearness, opaque; color, black; feel, 
smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, none; fracture, even to 
conchoidal; texture, massive. 

This coal will not burn into coke, because it is already a 
natural coke compressed from a porous structure into mas¬ 
sive texture. The ash that is left after burning anthracite is 
white or red, the white being normal, and the red results 
from the presence of iron oxide. Sulphur occurs in all 
coals, but least of all in anthracite, the heat that anthracited 
the coal having burnt out most of the sulphur. 

All the beds of both the upper and lower coals are anthra¬ 
cited in Eastern Pennsylvania, where there is the greatest 
assemblage of coal beds known, although unfortunately the 
total area of the three anthracite coal fields is only about five 
hundred square miles. There is a field of this coal in Rhode 
Island, but its position among the upper and lower coals is 
not determined. It is so hard and useless that geologists 
think it will be the last thing to be burned up when the final 
conflagration comes. There are also beds of sub-conglom¬ 
erate coals in Arkansas, and of lignite coals in the Rocky 
Mountains, which have been anthracited by the heat evolved 
during the upheaval of the Ozarks and the Rockies, and 
there are a great many places where the false coals have 
been metamorphosed, more or less. 

Anthracite is so hard and so free from expansion and 
contraction under heat changes that it is much in favor as a 










60 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


fuel for blast furnaces, but for puddling and other reverbera¬ 
tory furnaces it does not give flame enough. The invention 
of the regenerative gas furnace, however, enables it to be 
used by dosing it once with oxygen in the producer, turning 
it into carbonic oxide, and then dosing it again in the com¬ 
bustion chamber, thus obtaining all sorts of a flame. 

The use of anthracite for household purposes is- rapidly 
extending in Chicago and other western cities, not only 
owing to its superior cleanliness and freedom from smoke, 
but also because of the exertions of the trunk line railroads 
and other shippers. These have, until lately, been sending 
grain to the eastward with no compensating west-bound 
freight to fill their cars and vessels. How they are offering 
low freights to the coal men, and the increase of this traffic 
enables them to cut down their grain rates and thus relieve 
the mind of the granger. On the same principle, ships 
which formerly paid for ballast now get paid for bringing 
coal and iron ore from Europe to America as ballast. 

CANNEL. 

This coal is a variety of the bituminous coal, but differs 
enough to require a separate place and descriptive list: 


Gravity.., 
Hardness. 
Carbon. .. 
Hydrogen, 


.1.0 to 1.2 
1.5 to 2.0 
.82 p. ct. 
. 5 p. ct. 


Oxygen.8 p. ct. 

Water. 3 p. ct. 

Ash.2 p. ct. 


Lustre, dull resinous; clearness, opaque; color, black; 
feel, smooth to greasy; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage,- 
imperfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, massive. 

This coal is never found in a bed entirely by itself, there 
being always an inch or two of laminated bituminous coal 
interstratified. In many places a seam of coal will be half 
cannel and half bituminous. 

Cannel coal chips will take fire and burn easily like 
candles or pitch pine. This is owing to the presence of a 
large percentage of mineral oil. Even now, since petroleum 
has sold down below sixty cents per barrel, the men who 










THE COAL MEASURES. 


61 


make refined mineral oil by distillation from cannel coal, in 
Kentucky and West Virginia, are not broken up, nor do 
they seem to be losing any extra amount of sleep. Paraffine 
is one of their chief products, and very fine lubricating 
oils also. 

Cannel coal brings fancy prices in New York for use in 
open grate library fires, and there certainly is a sort of family 
resemblance between slippers, smoking caps, Turkish pipes 
and library fires of cannel coal at ten dollars per ton. 

SPLINT OR BLOCK. 

This is a very valuable member of the bituminous coal 
group, and its description is this: 


Gravity.1.0 to 1.4 

Hardness.1.3 to 1.7 

Carbon.84 p. ct. 

Hydrogen.5 p. ct. 


Oxygen...7 p. ct. 

Water. 2 p. ct. 

Ash.2 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous and dull vitreous alternately; clearness, 
opaque; color, black; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
imperfect; fracture, uneven ; texture, foliated. 

This coal is made up of alternate leaves of ordinary bitu¬ 
minous coal and cannel coal, and its great value consists in 
its freedom from expansion and contraction under heat- 
changes. It is thus enabled to hold up the “burden” in 
smelting furnaces, and it does not swell up and cake, and 
thus choke off the passage of the air blast. Why these qual¬ 
ities should result from a mixture of two coals, both of 
which do swell up more or dess, is not clearly determined, 
but the fact that block coal is frequently found to contain 
more oxygen than the above table states may have something 
to do with it. It is also possible that the different layers 
may behave differently at similar heat degrees and thus 
counteract each other. 

It is to be observed that the coals of the eastern edge of 
the Illinois and Indiana coal field and those of the western 
edge of the Appalachian coal field are the block coals, and 
the presence of the great “ Cincinnati rise ” between them 
may influence them. 










62 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


LIGNITE. 

This is the connecting link between the two full-grown 
coals and the yet growing peats of the present day. It is 
a very important substance to all the western half of our 
country, and, therefore, we give below the descriptive list of 
good average Rocky Mountain lignite: 


Gravity... 
Hardness. 
Carbon... 
Hydrogen, 


.1.0 to 1.2 
0.8 to 1.2 
66 p. ct. 
. 4 p. ct. 


Oxygen. 
Water.. 
Ash. 


18 p. ct. 
9 p. ct. 
3 p. ct 


Lustre, resinous to dull; clearness, opaque; color, black 
to brown; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
imperfect; fracture, even to uneven; texture, massive to 
lamellar. 

There are two distinct textures to lignite, and they are the 
same as the two which mark cannel coal and bituminous; 
one is apt to break up into plates or little cubes, while the 
other is massive, and fractures in conchoidal surfaces. The 
two textures in lignite are also found sometimes alternated, 
just as in the splint coals of full growth. To complete the 
analogy, the lignites in many places in the Rocky Mountain 
region are anthracited as completely as are the lower coals 
in the Pennsylvania districts. 

There are spots on this globe where a peat bog is peat on 
top and good lignite on bottom, and thus lignite is the coal 
of the quaternary as well as the tertiary formations. It will 
be again mentioned under the heading of Tertiary Coal. 


PEAT. 

Although peat is not coal, yet, as it is the carbon basis from 
which all coal is derived, we will give some of its points, as 
follows: 


Gravity.1.0 to 1.2 

Hardness.0.5 to 1.0 

Carbon,.30 p. ct. 

Hydrogen. 6 p. ct. 


Oxygen 
Water.. 
Ash. 


.30 p. ct. 
30 p. ct. 
4 p. ct. 


















THE COAL MEASURES. 


63 


Lustre, dull; clearness, opaque; color, grayish brown to 
black; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle to sectile; fracture, 
uneven to conchoidal; texture, earthy to massive. 

In a peat bog ten feet deep the moss on the top will be 
still growing, while the peat at the bottom can be carved 
into a jet-like pipe, polished highly, and can be used for 
smoking fine tobacco without injury to the flavor thereof, 
as the writer knows by experience. 

Mountain tops are curious places to find peat, but there 
are mountains in Georgia and the Carolinas whose tops are 
covered with peat moss, into which horses sink knee deep. 
The writer has seen peat crawling up a dry and sandy hill¬ 
side, from a footing in a little stream at the bottom. 
Whether it supplies itself by capillary attraction from the 
bottom, or whether it simply stores up the falling rain by 
shading the sand as it reaches upward, was not apparent, 
but most probably both methods were employed. 

In most peat bogs the fibrous structure of the moss is 
nearly obliterated at a depth of two feet below the surface, 
the materials being mineralized. 

coke7 

This is the carbon that is left after burning off all the 
other substances, which of course take off some of the carbon 
with them; so that coke does not weigh so much as the 
carbon percentage of the coal it came from would indicate. 
Coke varies so much in physical features that we cannot 
construct a proper descriptive list for it. 

Coals that produce good coke are scientifically called 
caking coals, because the volatile gases in them swell up and 
cake together, and gradually oxidize and disappear by dis¬ 
tillation, leaving such carbon behind as escaped combustion. 

Good caking coals are found in all the beds, from lignite 
down to the bottom; and the only sure way to test them 
is to try the experiment of coking them both in oven and 
in open air heaps, as some coals will coke under circum¬ 
stances which will burn others completely away. 


64 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


Coking coal of the very first class is about as valuable 
property as an unsatisfied mortal can get hold of. Look at 
the coke of the Connellsville region of West Pennsylvania! 
The coal is the great Pittsburgh bed, and it is so valuable 
for coke that they cannot afford to waste it on gas, although, 
properly handled, it is the best gas coal in the country. 
That coke is now shipped to Arizona by rail, where it sells 
for eighty dollars per ton, and yet it pays the silver miners 
to use it in their furnaces. It is also the principal smelting 
fuel for the Lake Superior iron ores, at Chicago, Cleveland 
and other convenient meeting points. Coke from Western 
Pennsylvania is also coming eastward in rapidly increasing 
quantities to mix with anthracite in smelting iron. It makes 
a more open-grained iron than anthracite alone, and this is 
considered a valuable feature by the makers of Bessemer 
steel. 

There is a very fair quality of natural coke near Rich¬ 
mond, Virginia, which is produced by the intrusion of a hot 
granite dyke through a bed of triassic coal. 


POSITIONS. 

Our good Mother Nature indulged herself in five serious 
spells of coal-making while building the masonry of this 
continent. These spells came on during the sub-carbon¬ 
iferous, the lower carboniferous, the upper carboniferous, the 
triassic and the tertiary ages, and she is still at work making 
peat in this the quaternary age. Before these" serious 
attacks came on she had tried her hand in making graphite 
beds and black bituminous shales, but the false coals of the 
sub-carboniferous period were evidently what reassured her 
and encouraged her to believe that she really could make 
good coal if she kept on trying. She kept on and succeeded, 
and we will now inspect her work. 



THE COAL MEASURES. 


65 


FALSE COALS. 

These coals are in among the bottom ledges of the carbon¬ 
iferous rocks, and a good deal of valuable carbon was wasted 
in making them. They are several thousand feet vertically 
below the great millstone grit or conglomerate rock, and 
they are underlaid by the red shales and sandstones of the 
upper Devonian. These can best be identified by going east¬ 
ward to the Oriskany sandstone, which is the third great 
plate of sandstone above the primary crystalline rocks, and 
is remarkable for being disfigured by pebbles of iron ore 
which stain its coarse and gritty surface. 

Starting from this rock, which is found nearly always on 
top of a ridge, and going west, the red sandstone and shale, 
just below the false coal measures, are the first of any great 
size that we come to, and they are nearly always found in a 
valley or well down toward the eastern foot of a ridge. On 
top of this ridge is a grayish coarse sandstone full of very 
small pSbbles and looking very much like a subdued sort of 
millstone grit. This sandstone is marked by false bedding, 
the strata being cracked into blocks and built up somewhat 
like rubble masonry. Resting on this gray sandstone the 
false coal measures are found as a succession of thin coal 
beds and thick slates or shales, alternating with each other. 

This coal outcrops in many places along the line of the 
Appalachian upheaval from the Susquehanna River to the 
Coosa River, in Alabama. It is found near Harrisburg in a 
spot where a great deal of money has been spent to develop 
it, but no valuable results have followed. It is found again 
on Sideling Hill, in Maryland, and in the valley of Meadow 
Branch, west of North Mountain, on the road from Martins- 
burg to Bath, in West Virginia. At this place a shaft 
seventy feet deep passed through five beds of coal, anthra¬ 
cite in character, but worthless, as the writer gouged out 
handfuls of the coal from the exposed surface of each bed. 
The five beds made up a thickness of eighteen feet, but the 
coal was simply coal dust and would not stand any sort of 
handling. 


G6 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


Tlie Dora coal mines, near Rawley Springs, are of this 
same horizon, but the coal is in better condition and some of 
it will bear transportation. This coal comes to the surface 
once or twice in the lateral valleys running into James 
River below Clifton Forge, and again at Brushy and Price’s 
Mountain's, near Christiansburg, Virginia. These two local¬ 
ities supply a fair-sized neighborhood demand with a toler¬ 
ably good semi-anthracite coal, but the people don’t know 
how to use it to the best advantage, as they burn it in open 
grates and otherwise as bituminous coal is used. The beds 
at these mines are only two or three feet thick, and but one 
bed at each place. One of them has the bed folded over on 
itself, giving double thickness. 

Near Martin’s Station, on the Norfolk & Western Railroad, 
there is another opening on the false coal measures, and 
here they find a thirty-inch bed of good semi-anthracite, and 
a twenty-foot bed of crumpled coal. The owners work the 
good lump coal and anathematize the coal dust and make a 
little money both ways. The writer thinks that careful 
examination will develop this bed of lump coal in larger 
size at points to the south and southwest from the present 
mines, and some sixty or more miles distant, in the hills 
between New River and the Upper Holston. 

These false coals occur at several places along the base of 
the Cumberland Mountain, and again in the eastern foot-hills 
of Lookout Mountain, near Dalton, in Georgia, where they 
have been worked without valuable results. Also, in the 
bed of a creek three miles from Gadsden, Alabama; while 
the lower beds of the true coals are found on top of Lookout 
Mountain, only a mile or two off. 

We are thus particular about this semi-worthless stuff, as 
we know that money will be saved to some of our readers. 
We have been professionally retained several times to exam¬ 
ine grounds, where heavy money spending was going on, 
and advise owners what to do, and we have seen a great deal 
of money lost in pushing operations against our advice. 
The same terrestrial disturbance which cracked the gray 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


67 


pebbly sandstone and false bedded it was certainly the force 
which crumbled the coal, and the chances are overwhelm¬ 
ingly against success in any venture depending for a profit 
on sending the coal to market. The market won’t have it. 
Where limestone and iron ores are near by, something 
might be done by burning lime, and possibly iron could be 
smelted by balling the coal dust with coal tar, etc. It might 
be used as a low-grade fuel for steam power, by using very 
large fire boxes. It actually is used for boiling salt water at 
Saltville, Virginia, and for smelting zinc ore at Martin s 
Station. 

LOWER COALS. 

These coals furnish three-fourths, at least, of the entire 
coal supply of the world. The fourth great sandstone, the 
one which caps the main Allegheny backbone, is the distin¬ 
guishing mark of these coals, and is called the conglomerate 
or mill-stone grit. The coals are both above and below it. 
The sub-conglomerate coals commence in the valley of the 
Kanawha River, near Quinnemont, and continue thence to 
the southwest into Alabama. Between ihese coals and the 
false coals there are several hundred feet of sandstones, 
slates, shales and shelly limestones, in Pennsylvania, but 
these all graduate into a mountain limestone as we go south, 
and in the Cumberland Mountain we find false coal at the 
base, then five to seven hundred feet of blue and gray lime¬ 
stone, then shales, etc., containing two good beds of true 
lower coal, capped over all by the conglomerate. The con¬ 
glomerate is the table rock of the elevated plains on the 
mountains, but there are terraces on top of this* table land, 
which terraces are made up of the shales, slates and coals 
which in Pennsylvania produce the anthracites, and in 
Maryland are found near Cumberland. The Sewannee coal 
mines of Tennessee are in these terraces. 

The sub-conglomerate coals are the coals worked most ex¬ 
tensively near Chattanooga, but one or two of the terrace beds 
are also found, and at a point some thirty miles up the 
Tennessee River there is a great thickening up of the coal 


68 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


beds, and very fine gas and coking coals have been recently 
discovered. The heavy beds now being developed near 
Cumberland Gap are also mostly sub-conglomerate coals, 
and the same is true of the Coal Creek beds. 

The Coosa, Cahawba and Black Warrior coal fields of Ala¬ 
bama are also in the sub-conglomerate, and furnish most ex¬ 
cellent coal. Fortunately, the existence of enormous iron 
ore beds, and the presence of the mountain limestone, and the 
good coking qualities of much of the coal render its immediate 
and local utilization very profitable, and, in fact, there are 
very few localities in* this country so favored in these re¬ 
spects. 

The Illinois coal field, extending into Indiana and Western 
Kentucky, is now considered to belong to this sub-con¬ 
glomerate division. In Illinois, the coal near Muddy River, 
below St. Louis, is a most excellent coal; but the coal of 
about all the rest of the State is very inferior, containing 
sulphur and aL sorts of deleterious impurities. It, however, 
underlies three-fourths of the State, and can be dug up on 
almost anybody’s farm, so that it compensates for the 
absence of timber on the prairies, so far as domestic fuel is 
concerned. In Indiana the eastern edge of the coal field, 
from Brazil down to the Ohio River, affords a very valuable 
variety of splint or block coal, which holds the “burden” in 
an iron furnace very well, and is used raw. 

In Kentucky these sub-conglomerate coals afford a very 
rich, oily cannei coal in the region of the Trade water River. 
It is called Breckenridge coal, and is a fine material for the 
distillation of paraffine and the mineral oils. 

There is a coal field in Michigan which is also referred to 
these sub-conglomerates, but as it only contains one bed 
about three feet thick and of very impure coal it is not of 
much importance except for household and local use. 

West of the Mississippi River there is a fine lay-out of 
coal, extending in broken doses from Central Iowa down 
through Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, Arkansas into 
Texas. It keeps mainly to the west of the Ozark moun- 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


69 


tains, and it has coal beds which are allied to the sub-con¬ 
glomerate and to the beds above the conglomerate also. 
There is, undoubtedly, some very fine coal in Iowa and 
Southeastern Kansas, much of it being fair coking coal. 
This coal field is larger in area than the Appalachian coal 
fields, but it has only two to four workable beds, and none 
of these have over five feet of thickness. The writer sug¬ 
gests that this whole field should be named the Ozark coal 
field, for it really surrounds the Ozark mountain range. 
The Iowa end of it curves down to St. Charles, eighteen 
miles from St. Louis, and from thenfce it is found in small 
isolated troughs down through Eastern Missouri and 
Arkansas into Texas, in many places being anthracited, pre¬ 
sumably by the heat of the Ozark upheaval. 

Returning now to the Appalachian coal field, we will be¬ 
gin on the conglomerate and work upward. The first coal 
bed of any value we come to is the Lower Kittanning, 
which in the East is known as Buck Mountain Vein. 
There are sometimes three beds of this separated by shales 
and clays, and it is really a group of beds. The bottom 
bed furnishes a block or splint coal, while the other two are 
simply good coal, anthracite in the east and bituminous in 
the west. The three beds aggregate in many places about 
ten feet in thickness, and sometimes they are found with 
merely clay partings between them. The Upper Kittanning 
coal comes next, and in the northern part of the coal field it 
is not found thick enough to work. It is, however, the 
great cannel coal-bearing vein, and is the cannel coal of the 
West Virginia and East Kentucky regions. These Lower 
and Upper Kittanning beds are separated by a micaceous 
sandstone of considerable thickness, and they are the coals 
of the Clearfield region, the Broad Top and the Allegheny 
Summit and Stony Creek Valley regions. 

Next above these, with about a hundred feet of soft 
shales supervening, comes the Lower Freeport coal, which 
ranges about four feet thick of excellent coal, which cokes 
well. Then come in more shale and sandstone and an 


70 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


eight-foot bed of limestone; then a little more shale, and we 
come to the Upper Freeport' coal, called in the East the 
Mammoth Vein, and in Cumberland the Big Vein. In the 
anthracite regions this vein is sometimes one solid bed fifty 
to sixty feet thick, and sometimes it is a group of two or 
three thinner veins. In the Cumberland region it is four¬ 
teen feet of the best semi-bituminous coal. These two 
Freeport coals are also found in the Stony Creek region, 
where the Big Yein is reduced to five or six feet in thick¬ 
ness. The Cumberland coal basin contains all four of the 
groups of the lower coals above the conglomerate, viz.: the 
two Kittanning groups and the two Freeport groups. 

These are all the valuable beds of the lower coal meas¬ 
ures, and the whole series is capped and overlaid by the 
great Mahoning sandstone, which is the fifth great plate of 
sandstone above the primary rocks. This sandstone is 
found in the anthracite regions, but has not been definitely 
recognized in the Cumberland region or elsewhere to the 
east of the Allegheny backbone. It forms the table rock of 
Ohio Pyle Falls on the Youghiogheny River above Connells- 
ville, and dips under the great Pittsburgh basin, re-appear¬ 
ing in Ohio close to the Pennsylvania line. Everywhere 
west of its re-appearance the beds of these four groups of 
lower coals come up to the surface again, and the great 
Ohio coal region commences and continues westward until 
these coal beds “peter out” as they approach the axis of 
the great “ Cincinnati rise.” 

All down through West Virginia, Southeast Ohio and 
Northeast Kentucky, this great trough of Mahoning sand¬ 
stone, underlaid by the lower coals, continues, and the Ohio 
River runs along the centre of it as far as Huntingdon, when 
it suddenly turns westward and cuts out through the side of 
the trough owing to the elevation of the country south. 
The Mahoning sandstone itself thins down and peters out in 
the neighborhood of Pound Gap, and from there on down 
the table-lands of the Cumberland mountains the lower coal 
beds have no effective roof over them, and so we find them 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


71 


being more and more washed away until, in time, they exist 
only in terraces on top of the conglomerate table-land, as at 
the Sewannee mines, in Tennessee. Here and there we still 
find patches of the old Mahoning sandstone on the moun¬ 
tain between Pound Gap and Cumberland Gap, and they 
roof in some magnificent coal deposits. 

UPPER COALS. 

The inside of this great trough of the Mahoning sand¬ 
stone is filled up with the slates, shales and coal beds of the 
upper coal measures. The first coal above the sandstone 
is a bed of five or six feet thick, called in the anthracite re¬ 
gions the rough-bedded coal, but west of the mountains 
this bed is split up into two or more beds, and frequently 
they contain cannel coal. Altogether they are not very 
valuable, as is evidenced by the fact that they underlie 
Pittsburgh and vicinity, at a depth of seventy feet below 
water level, and have never been worked, nor do they affect 
the value of lands to any extent. 

About three hundred feet above these semi-valueless beds 
comes in- the great Pittsburgh bed, the king of the upper 
coals. This bed runs south from Pittsburgh along the 
Ohio and Monongahela Rivers, and i3 mined everywhere en- 
route. It peters out among the headwaters of the Cheat, 
Monongahela, Tygart’s Yalley, and Little Kanawha Rivers, 
in West Virginia. The petering out is owing to the 
presence of a great transverse axis of upheaval running east 
and west from Point Pleasant, on the Ohio River, to the 
backbone of the main Allegheny mountain, near the 
junction of Pendleton and Pocahontas counties. This 
transverse axis is the watershed between the rivers above 
named and the waters of the Greenbrier, Elk, Gauley and 
others, flowing into the Great Kanawha River. 

This Pittsburgh bed is not entirely identified in the valleys 
leading into the Great Kanawha River, but, undoubted, areas 
of it are found in the Big Sandy and the Guyandotte valleys 
beyond the Kanawha, and the better opinion is that it is also 


73 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


in the Kanawha valleys, and only needs more study to 
bring about its complete recognition. 

This Pittsburgh bed is known in the anthracite regions as 
the Primrose Vein, and it is there only seven to ten feet in 
thickness, thus being the only bed that does not follow the 
general example of the rocks and thicken eastwardly. 

There are several coal seams in these upper coal meas¬ 
ures above the Pittsburgh bed, but they are not of much im¬ 
portance. The condition of affairs on the earth appears to 
have begun to change about this time. Local disturbances 
set in and tossed the surface up in one place, or let it down 
in another, and the consequence was that coal beds formed 
during such times are found to be thick in one place and 
thin in others. Big pockets succeeded by feather edges are 
the prominent features ; but the big pockets are, nevertheless, 
very valuable when found, and it is worth any man’s while 
to look for them. 

TRIASSIC COALS. 

From the end of the great Carboniferous age until the 
Triassic age of the Mesozoic time there appears to have been 
no coal-making business carried on by the builders of this 
continent, but in Europe the Permian formations are coal 
bearing. In Europe also the Triassic coals are quite ex¬ 
tensive, but on this continent they are insignificant. We 
mention them here because, though so small as to size, they 
have already been of immense importance in that the Triassic 
coals of the Richmond coal basin fed two-thirds of the fires 
in the Southern arsenals and iron works, and kept the late 
civil war going for at least two years longer than it would 
otherwise have lasted The other one-third of the fires were 
fed by the sub-conglomerate coals of Alabama and Southeast 
Tennessee and North Georgia. 

These Triassic coals are found in beds in the bottoms of the 
great troughs in the primary rocks, which troughs are filled up 
with the New Red sandstone and its accompanying shales, etc. 
For further details regarding these sandstones the reader 
will consult the chapter on Bed Rocks. These coals 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


78 


are found in three coal fields, one at or near Richmond, 
Virginia, one on Deep River, North Carolina, and one on 
Dan River, same State. The latter is small, and the coal is 
sandy and the beds are few and thin, so that it will never 
accomplish the old champion feat of “setting the Thames on 
fire.” The Richmond (sometimes called the Chesterfield) 
and the Deep River coal basins are both valuable, and contain 
each four or five seams of tolerably good bituminous coal. 

Some of the seams are five to six feet thick, while others 
squeeze down to less than a foot, and they are all inclined to 
be irregular in thickness. 

The coal makes a light coke, which proved its own value 
in the Southern foundries, and the location of the Rich¬ 
mond mines near tidewater is so advantageous that these 
coals and cokes are used in many of the Atlantic cities. 
They were the first coal mines worked in America, and they 
were used in Philadelphia and other coast towns long be¬ 
fore the Revolution. One of the mines is now worked to 
a depth of more than two thousand feet, and is the deepest 
mine in this country, except those on the Comstock silver 
lode. 

There are places in the Richmond coal basin where a fine 
natural coke is found, and its working is found to be profit¬ 
able. It is always found in the vicinity of granite dykes, 
which show all the signs of having been injected while very 
hot. The coal has thus had all its more volatile constituents 
burned out, and the carbon has been left as a porous coke, 
which would probably have been a hard anthracite if it had 
age and pressure enough to compact it. 

As stated in the chapter on Bed Rocks, the writer thinks 
he has recognized rocks of the Triassic age in South Caro¬ 
lina and Georgia, and he advises people in those States to 
keep an eye open for black dirt and slates or shales with 
fossil leaves in them, and other signs of coal or coal rocks. 
Good coal beds in the country between Augusta and Atlanta 
would be worth having; but don’t get excited over the black 
dirts and earthy lignites found east of Berzelia, for they are 
not what is wanted. 


74 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


TERTIARY COALS. 

The coals of this age are the lignites, often called brown 
coals, and we have in the western half of this country the 
most important lignites of the world. They are now making 
as fine iron and steel in Colorado as is made anywhere, and 
their fuel is lignite and its coke. There are qualities, how¬ 
ever, about this coke which render it unfit to use in some 
silver smelting, and eminently fitted in other silver smelting, 
and for this reason Connellsville coke is still shipped to Col¬ 
orado and Arizona, etc. Tne writer is inclined to think that 
the peculiar qualities referred to are not in the lignite coke, 
but rather in the respective brains of the smelting masters. 

There is a great difference to be observed in the respect¬ 
ive modes of deposition of the older coals and of the newer 
coals or lignites. The beds of the regular bituminous and 
anthracite coals are continuous over wide stretches of coun¬ 
try, some of them being recognizable at distances several 
hundred of miles apart, while the lignite beds of the Rocky 
Mountain regions rarely contiune as much as fifty miles. 

They appear to be the result of peat moss growing in and 
filling up a large number of isolated ponds or lakes at various 
levels, rather than the growth of one solid peat bog over one 
vast area, as are each of the older beds. 

There are points in the Rocky Mountain regions where 
seven and eight beds of most excellent lignite are laid one 
on top of another with thin layers of sandstone, shales, etc., 
between the coal beds, and on top of all the peat moss is still 
green. These lignite beds are nearly always thick enough to 
work standing up, and the amount of carbon thus stored up 
'in that region where it is so much needed it truly enormous— 
sufficient for the mining operations of millions of years at 
the present rate of consumption. And, further, it is spread 
out in spots all over the whole area from the Pacific Ocean to 
the plains east of the Rocky Mountains. Much of it has been 
anthracited, particularly in the Southern Territories, and a 
new find is just announced down on the lower Rio Grande, in 
Texas and Mexico. 


THE COAL MEASURES. 


75 


As stated in the chapter on Bed Rocks, the tertiary beds 
extend from Texas clear around to New York. At numer¬ 
ous points in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, 
Virginia and Maryland, an impure lignite is found. It is in 
one bed or several, at different localities ; and near Berzelia, 
in Georgia, one bed is nearly ready to become compact and 
resinous, while the rest are earthy. The general tendency is 
for these lignites to be worthless in the east, and grow better 
as they progress to the west, until in Texas they are worth 
looking for. 

Some revenue steamers have recently supplied themselves 
with good coal from sandstone cliffs overhanging the sea in 
Alaska, and prospectors are outfitting to begin mining there. 
The character and geological position of this coal is as yet 
unknown, but the reports show that there is a likelihood of 
soon getting our seven millions of money back out of 
Seward’s purchase of that frozen land. 


III. 

OIL AND GAS. 


Petroleum—Oil and Gas Bearing Strata, Oil and 
Gas Catching Strata, Oil Breaks, Oil and Gas 
Springs, Oil and Gas Prospects.—Remarks. 


PETROLEUM. 

This is hydro-carbon, the two elements being in such vary¬ 
ing proportions that no general analysis and desciiption 
can be given. The first thing to be remembered is that 
petroleum means rock oil, and does not mean coal oil, and 
with this as a key the geologists have unlocked many of the 
so-called mysteries of its occurrence. 

It is found that ordinary hydrous uncrystalline limestone 
of the secondary and tertiary formations contains both the 
hydrogen and the carbon, and that coal also contains them, 
and further, that the chemists have made ordinary petroleum 
out of both limestone and coal in their laboratories. It is 
also a fact that very little oil has ever has been found in or 
above the coal measures, or in any district where it is at all 
likely that the true coal measures previously extended. 

The petroleum fields east of the Mississippi River are all 
in districts underlaid by the lower secondary rocks, but the 
oil is not all confined, like coal, to one certain group of 
rocks like the carboniferous group, but it is found in sev¬ 
eral groups. In Canada oil is found as low down as the 
Trenton limestone of the lower Silurians, and this is 




OIL AND GAS. 


77 


believed to be the lowest position in which we can hope to 
find it, on account of its proximity to the metamorphic 
. rocks. 

Next above the Trenton, the Niagara limestones and shales 
show the first attempt at bituminization, as found at Chicago 
and elsewhere. This rock will burn for a considerable time, 
but does not make an ash, and oil has been made of it by 
boiling and skimming the oil off the water surface. 

At other points in Canada the Lower Helderberg lime¬ 
stone seems to have produced oil, which has lodged in the 
Oriskany sandstone above it. The Marcellus shales, which 
are bituminous, appear to have been charged with hydro¬ 
carbon from the Upper Helderberg limestone just below 
them, and they produce oil in paying quantities at Canadian 
points. 

Next above these come the Genessee slates and shales, 
which are also bituminous, and are the principal sources of 
gas supply for the city of Erie and many towns ih that re¬ 
gion. The Chemung group of coarse, gritty shales is the 
great basin or porous strata in which the great bulk of the 
oils produced among the many beds of limestone below ap¬ 
pear to have been caught in their upward movement, and 
have been penned up for man’s use when he should come of 
age. Oil is also found from this Chemung group all the way 
up to the base of the coal measures, but not in paying 
quantities. In the oil regions these different beds of porous 
rocks are called, locally, the first, second, third or fourth 
“sandrock,” and so on. 

It is to be noted that the great oil-holding strata are al¬ 
ways regular beds, and they are also sandstones, conglomer¬ 
ates, or cavernous limestone. The fine-grained slates act as 
roofs to the porous rocks, and the fine-grained limestones 
act in the double capacity of roofs to catch the oil coming 
up from below, and as generators of oil to be caught above. 

The earth’s crust wherever dug into is found to have a local 
standing water level, and all the porous or permeable rocks 
below that level are water-soaked down to as low a level as 


78 


OIL AND GAS 


man has yet reached. Oil generated in the lower rocks, 
being lighter than water, works its way upward until it is 
stopped and collected in the first anticlinal axis (trough 
turned upside down) of impervious rock it meets. It col¬ 
lects under the crown of this anticlinal or arch and 
saturates all the porous rock below the impervious stratum, 
while the surplus water leaks out through fissures under the 
bottom edges of the trough. 

If more and more oil accumulates, the line of the oil bot¬ 
tom falls lower and lower until some of the oil gets out 
along with the water under the edge of the trough, or 
through some crack or fissure higher up, if such there be. 
This leaves all the porous rock under the impervious arch 
saturated with oil down to the level of the leak. If any of 
the oil turns into gas it collects at the top, right under the 
crown of the arch, and it is the first thing to be struck by a 
drill. 

The fissure or leak level may be thousands of feet below 
the surface of the ground, and there may be one or more 
other strata of impervious arched rock above the one we 
have been discussing. In this case, the oil escaping from 
the saturated oil-catcher below will be caught again by the 
next arch, where it will accumulate and saturate all the 
porous rock until it establishes a leak, starts again on its 
upward journey, is caught by another arch, saturates another 
body of porous rock, finds a leak, and finally appears on the 
surface as an oil spring. A drill hole sent down from the 
surface through these arches will successively and success¬ 
fully tap these reservoirs of imprisoned oil in the saturated 
rocks, and the water pressure under them will raise the oil. 

The flat, gently-curved arches or anticlinal axes are very 
much more apt to contain oil than the sharply curved ones, 
as the latter nearly always are more or less fractured at or 
near the crown of the arch, and the oil has passed right 
through into the miscellaneous strata above and been dissi¬ 
pated. These fractures at or near the crown of the arch, 
when they are on the surface, show up a lot of broken and 


OIL AND GAS. 


79 


tilted rocks, more or less porous, and saturated slightly with 
oil, which oozes out at the bottom in oil springs. 

These oil springs are always sluggish, and they arise from 
the downward drainage of the oil, since the upward hydro¬ 
static pressure has been relieved by the fracture of the im¬ 
pervious strata. These springs have very little oil behind 
them, and are of use principally as arguments advanced 
while selling the property to more verdant operators, who 
are apt to lose their wits when they see great cliff-lil$e 
masses of oily-smelling rocks with oil springs oozing out at 
the base. 

These broken-backed anticlinals are called “oil breaks,” 
and they may be badly broken all the way down to the 
deep, or they may be only broken among the upper arches, 
and the lower ones may be full of oil yet. Again, one end 
of an oil break may be but slightly broken* and produces a 
light volatile oil, while the other end, many miles away, may 
show fissures filled with asphalt or other mineral resin left 
by the oil as its lighter and more volatile portions evaporated 
long years ago, while the middle portions of this same oil 
break may be yielding quantities of valuable heavy lubri¬ 
cating oils. 

There are as many different aspects presented by oil dis¬ 
tricts as there are differences in degrees of curvature of 
arches, and differences in directions of streams. A stream 
system which cuts across the axis of upheaval will present 
an entirely different topography from a system which cuts 
diagonally, or which runs lengthwise with those axes, and 
when all three systems or any two of them are found uniting 
with each other to drain the district the result is a very com¬ 
plicated country, most fearfully and wonderfully made, and 
requiring intelligent study to prevent “ dry-holing.” 

The presence of sluggish oil springs is something which 
requires skilled brains to decipher. These springs can just 
as well come from valuable reservoirs of oil below as from 
the simple drainage of semi-saturated rocks above, but it 
requires trained brains to find out which case it is that is 


80 


OIL AND GAS. 


presented, and square miles of country may have to be critic¬ 
ally examined before the underground structure can be 
made out. 

Another feature in oil districts, often misunderstood or 
overlooked, is that a country may be to all appearances 
entirely barren of oil, and with no surface signs to be found, 
and yet it may be on the back of a wide-spreading under¬ 
ground arch so flat and gently curved that no one has noticed 
it. These are found to be the most productive of all the 
occurrences of oil, and the curvature is so imperceptible that 
it requires the use of instruments of precision to determine 
it. These very flat arches produce oil over wide strips of 
territory along their axis, whereas the sharper arches only 
produce it along a very narrow strip which is hard to hit. 

We don’t know the exact conditions under which the 
hydrogen and carbon in the rocks unite to form oil, and we 
don’t know either how much oil comes out of the ancient 
bituminous slates and shales; nor do we know whether the 
oil and the bitumen are both the product of ancient life, 
animal and vegetable, which has become mineralized like 
coal; but the fact that large quantities of very good oil are 
now extracted from rocks and beds of the tertiary formation 
would seem to show that no one single source is to be credited 
with the production of all the oil. The oil found along the 
coast in California is all from the tertiaries, and so is that 
which is now being delivered at points on the Union Pacific 
and Central Pacific railways. 

There are reasons for thinking that oil territory will be 
found along the crowns of the lateral ridges on either side 
of the Ozark Mountain upheaval, from Missouri down to 
Central Texas. Crowley’s Ridge, in Arkansas, seems to 
promise good prospects. The southwestern prolongation of 
the “Cincinnati rise” down about the Muscle Shoals of 
the Tennessee River, or around the headwaters of Tombig- 
bee River, in the same neighborhood, also promises well. 
The country to the south of Chattanooga contains oil, but it 
is in semi-saturated rocks with downward drainage, owing to 


OIL AND GAS. 


81 


the sharpness of the anticlinals and the consequent fissures 
in the crowns of the arches. Any wide-spreading, uncracked 
anticlinals in that country deserve attention, as the thickness 
of the Devonian and Silurian rocks there is greater than 
anywhere else in America. 

REMARKS. 

The great development of natural gas in recent years is 
not a new discovery at all, for these gas holes have been 
found nearly everywhere that petroleum has been bored for, 
and the gas is now thought to be the oil itself coming up in 
the gaseous form under certain conditions of pressure, or 
release from pressure. The gas mostly comes from the 
Trenton limestone, especially in Ohio and elsewhere along 
the “Cincinnati rise,” and those portions of this Trenton 
limestone that have much magnesia replacing lime are 
found to be most productive. This Cincinnati arch runs 
in a northeast and southwest direction, with a width of at 
least a hundred and fifty miles, and its western edge is 
marked by the ledge rocks forming the Ohio River Falls at 
Louisville, the Harpeth Shoals on the Cumberland River, 
and the Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River. 

The general history of the natural gas development shows 
that the gas has high pressure at first, and this pressure, 
ranging in some cases up to seven hundred pounds to the 
square inch, continues for a month or more, then begins to 
decline, slowly and finally gets down to such a point that 
the hole chokes up with salt water, or goes dry, and the 
industries depending upon it for fuel supply have to either 
get it from another hole or return to the use of the old reli¬ 
able coal. The great gas companies around Pittsburgh are 
now testing processes for making fuel gas with which to 
replace natural gas, and thus to save their heavy investments 
in pipe lines, with very favorable prospects of success, too. 


IV. 

IKON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


Iron—Magnetite, Hematite, Limonite, Siderite,Pyrite. 
Manganese—Glance, Pyrolusite, Manganite, 

PsiLOMELANE, WAD, RhODOCROCITE. 


IRON. 


We all know what iron is, but nevertheless we will give 
the following description of it: 


Gravity.7.7 

Hardness.4.5 


Iron.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, whitish-gray; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, flexible to elastic; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect; fracture, uneven, fibrous; texture, massive. 

Pure iron shows almost no fibre, the fibrous structure 
being imparted to it by its rolling and other manipulation. 
Until very recently it has been held that metallic iron is no¬ 
where found on this earth as an earthly product, but that many 
masses of metallic iron in the shape of meteors are continu¬ 
ally dropping in on us from outer space. There have 
recently, however, been discovered in Greenland some large 
masses of metallic iron projecting from fresh surfaces of 
broken lava, but the “find” has not yet been accurately 
described, and we will return to our meteoric iron, as the only 
shape in which metallic iron occurs in this world without the 
intervention of man. This meteoric iron usually contains 








IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


83 


some other native metals, such as nickel, cobalt, copper, tin, 
and occasionally some sulphides, chlorides, carbon, and phos¬ 
phorous. Some microscopists have thought that they found 
remains of life in some of its first forms, but this has not 
met with successful verification. The principal ores of iron 
are the following: 

MAGNETITE. 

This is the black oxide, and its points are: 

Gravity.5.1 I Iron.72 p. ct. 

Hardness.6.0 j Oxygen.28 p. ct. 

Lustre, sub-metallic; clearness, opaque; color, black to 
dark brown; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, indis¬ 
tinct; fracture, uneven, sub-conchoidal; texture, massive,* 
granular, crystalline. 

This is the magnetic ore or loadstone, and appears to be 
the earliest concentration of iron in beds of its own after 
getting loose from the igneous or'prime rocks. The iron in 
these rocks is generally protoxide, whereas the magnetite is 
proto-sesqui-Oxide of iron. 

The powder of this ore is not entirely black, but is slightly 
reddish, and its streak on a piece of hard black slate is still 
more reddish.* 

There is a variety of this ore which contains titanium, 
replacing a portion of the iron, and the addition of a little 
manganese, zinc, and alumina, make it what is called Frank- 
linite, from which a peculiarly hard iron is made in New 
Jersey. 

This ore is mostly found among the rocks of the primary 
formation, and is in veins and beds, some of which are of 
immense size. Some veins contain only magnetite, and 
others contain also hematite. 

HEMATITE. 

This is the sesqui-oxide of iron, and is the next step in the 
process of oxidation after the magnetite. Its descriptive list 
is as follows: 


Gravity.. 

Hardness 


4.8 

6.0 


Iron 

Oxygen 


70 p. ct. 
30 p. ct. 











84 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque to sub-translucent; 
color, rusty gray; feel, harsh; cleavage, distinct, but not 
perfect; elasticity, brittle; fracture, uneven to sub-con- 
choidal; texture, lamellar, massive, granular. 

The above description is of the purest variety, the Specu¬ 
lar , and this is the variety which is found associated with 
magnetite in beds and veins. When this ore, which to a 
certain extent is crystalline, is washed down and re-deposited, 
it becomes earthy or chalky in texture, very red in color, and 
dull in lustre, with no cleavage. All these changes may take 
place and yet the ore may be just as pure as the original 
specular ore, but the chances are greatly against it, as it is 
almost certain to pick up impurities and carry them into its 
new bed. 

When these impurities constitute any considerable propor¬ 
tion of the whole bed, and are principally sandy clay, the ore 
is called Ironstone. When the ore is very red and finely 
triturated it is called Ochre or Dyestone. When it contains 
many fossils it is called fossiliferous. There is also a variety 
called Needle ore , which is very hard to describe, but it looks 
like many bunches of needles, and the little fibres get into 
your skin and are very difficult to wash off. This peculiar 
structure is found also in limonite, much of which is fibrous, 
and is also called needle ore. 

Like magnetite, this ore also has a variety containing tita¬ 
nium, and it is called Titanic iron ore, or Menaccannite. It 
also contains manganese and other substances, and some¬ 
times the titanium about equals the iron in amount. It is 
rarely found except as squarish blocks of hard brown-black 
ore scattered around on the surface, or in small grains in the 
beds of streams. The powder and streak of titanic iron ore 
are brown-black, nearly the same as in magnetite, while the 
powder and streak of hematite are always a lively red. 

Hematite can be slightly magnetic, and is found in the 
primary rocks with magnetite or by itself. Immense beds of 
it are found also among the secondary formations, especially 
those below the coal group. There are also valuable beds of 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


85 


it among the Triassic red sandstones. There are beds of this 
ore which are continuous over hundreds of miles of terri¬ 
tory, and can always be found in the same place on the geo¬ 
logical column, and between the same rocks. Such is the 
fossiliferous bed which forms the top of Red Mountain, in 
Alabama, and is traceable step by step clear up into Penn¬ 
sylvania, where it is called the dyestone ore. 

LIMONITE. 

This is called brown hematite, and its points are: 

Gravity.3.8 Hematite.86 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.2 Water.14 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic to dull; clearness, opaque; color, dull- 
brown or yellowish-red; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, earthy, mas¬ 
sive, fibrous, concretionary. 

Probably more iron is made from this ore than from any 
other. It is erroneously called brown hematite, apparently 
because it is not blood-colored. It contains about sixty per 
cent, of metallic iron, and its powder and streak are always 
yellow. It is found presenting a vast number of physical 
features, and it is safe to say that any iron ore which you 
cannot distinctly classify under any other name is a variety 
of this limonite. 

This ore appears to have been formed by the precipitation 
of iron oxide and water of hydration out of chemical solu¬ 
tions of other iron ores. The writer knows of a fissure 
between limestone and sandstone, which fissure is sixty to 
seventy feet wide, filled with clay, and a six foot vein or 
bed of pure limonite running through the centre of the clay. 
Near the outcrop, where the weathering has been greatest, 
the clay is nearly white and the limonite vein is thickest, but 
two hundred feet down from the surface the vein is only 
half as thick, and the surrounding clay is very red with dis¬ 
seminated hematite. It would seem that when this hematite 
is reached by the rain waters and other influences it is dis- 







86 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


solved (as in the case of chalybeate springs) and concen¬ 
trated at the middle line of the clay by attraction of the 
particles of iron for each other. 

As might be expected, this dissolving and precipitating 
process results in a variety of composition, and many impuri¬ 
ties creep in. Anything that the solution comes in contact 
with, and that it can dissolve, is sure to get entangled and 
deposited with the limonite, and thus it happens that nearly 
all limonite found in bogs and marshy places contains more 
or less of the phosphorus which is always to be found 
among decaying matters. 

There are also degrees of hydration among limonites, and 
as the water of hydration must be roasted out of the ore the 
amount of the water is a consideration of some importance. 
The ore Gothite is an incomplete limonite, and contains only 
ten per cent, of water to ninety per cent, of hematite, and 
its powder and streak are more reddish-yellow than the pure 
yellow of the limonite. The ore Turgite is another incom¬ 
plete limonite, and contains only five per cent, of water to 
ninety-five per cent, of hematite, and its powder and streak 
are nearly as pure red as those of hematite. 

Limonite is found almost entirely among the secondary and 
later formations, but it is to be looked for everywhere, as it 
is the most universally distributed of all the iron ores. All 
three varieties are often to be found in the same bed, but the 
full-watered limonite is more abundant than gothite or 
turgite. 

SIDERITE. 

This ore is also called Ghalybite , Hone ore , Spathic ore y Clay 
ironstone , Carbonate of iron , and sometimes the richer ores are 
called Black Band ore. Its descriptive list is about as fol¬ 
lows : 

Gravity.3.8 

Hardness.4.0 

Lustre, vitreous to dull; clearness, opaque to translucent; 
color, white-gray, light brown ; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; 


Iron oxide.62 p. ct. 

Carbonic acid.38 p. ct. 







IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 87 

cleavage, perfect to imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, 
granular. 

This description allows of a deal of latitude, but that is 
because the ore itself occurs in many conditions. In its 
most common form it looks like a roundish mass of gray 
limestone, very fine grained, and which shows a concre¬ 
tionary structure inside. Sometimes these masses will show 
brownish layers on the outside with gray or white materials 
inside, and sometimes the brown will be inside and the gray 
outside. Another form of siderite is the crystalline, and 
this is so very translucent that you can almost see through it. 

Very few iron carbonates assay up to more than forty per 
cent, of metallic iron, and the most of them range from 
thirty to thirty-three per cent., but, nevertheless, they are 
very valuable, as they contain few deleterious impurities, 
and smelt more readily and economically than any other 
ore, owing to the carbon in them. When very low in phos¬ 
phorus they are also used by the best ironmasters to mix in 
with the richer ores, so as to reduce the percentage of the 
phosphorus and other deleterious impurities of the richer 
oxide ores, as well as to'facilitate smelting. 

The celebrated “Black Band” ore, from which the “Scotch 
Pig ” is produced, is siderite, and so are the iron “ Carbon¬ 
ates” of the silver mines near Leadville and elsewhere in 
the Rocky Mountains. This ore is found in all the forma¬ 
tions, but it is most plentiful in the Carboniferous beds, 
where it occurs in regular strata intercalated between slates 
and shales and in coal beds. It is always mixed with more 
or less sand or clay, and sometimes it is not easily recog¬ 
nized even as a clay ironstone, although in this shape it is the 
great ore of England. 

There is a sort of auxiliary ore of this variety which is 
called Ankerite. This ore is a mixture of thirty per cent, of 
siderite with twenty per cent, of magnesite and fifty per 
cent, of calcite, and a good body of it is valuable, as it car¬ 
ries not only its own flux, but also enough more to flux 
twice its own weight of the richer oxide ores. It is wanted 


88 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


by the ironmasters for mixing, and can be distinguished 
from ordinary limestone by the fact that it is more like 
marble in appearance, is ten per cent, heavier than marble, 
and will cut marble. The crystalline transparent siderite is 
the purest form of all these carbonate ores, but it is too rare 
to be wasted as a mere iron ore when it is so valued as a 
cabinet specimen. 

PYRITE. 

There are two iron pyrites, or rather iron sulphides, and 
there are also two more sulphides in which iron is a consid¬ 
erable ingredient. Their descriptions are as follows: 

The common iron pyrite contains— 

Gravity.....5.0 I Iron.47 p. ct. 

Hardness.6.3 | Sulphur. 53 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, brassy-yellow; 
feel, harsh to smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, conchoidal, uneven; texture, cubic, granular. 

There is a whiter variety of this ore which is called Mar - 
casite, and which is slightly lighter in weight, but the differ" 
ences are not great. 

The ore Pyrrhotite , which is commonly called Magnetic 
Pyrites , is the richest in iron. It is as follows: 

Gravity.4.5 Iron.60 p. ct. 

Hardness.4.0 Sulphur.40 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, deep yellow to 
reddish-yellow; feel, harsh to smooth; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular. 

The streak of this ore is dark gray, and it is magnetic. It 
is a little lighter in weight and much softer than pyrite, but 
it cannot be cut with a knife. 

Mispickel is Arsenopyrite , or arsenical pyrites, also called 
Mundic y and its points are: 


Gravity.. 
Hardness, 
Iron. 


.6.2 

. 6.0 

,34 p. ct. 


Arsenic. 

Sulphur 


.46 p. ct. 
.20 p. ct. 

















IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


89 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, grayish-white; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, not perfect; frac¬ 
ture, uneven; texture, granular. 

This ore is found among the primary rocks in veins along 
with the sulphide ores and compounds. The miners call it 
mundic, but, as they also apply the same name to other sul¬ 
phides, it is not of much significance as a name. 

The other sulphide containing much iron in its constitu¬ 
tion is Chalcopyrite, which is described as one of the copper 
ores. 

The upper parts of sulphide veins are usually oxidized into 
limonitic gossan above the water level, and these gossans 
are often valuable and pure iron ores. 

It was true that a few years ago these sulphide ores were 
not used or counted as iron ores, but things are changing 
rapidly, and now, over in Spain and in England, they are 
first burning out part of the sulphur and making sulphuric 
acid of it, and they are next leaching the remainder of 
the sulphur together with the copper and part of the iron, 
and either making vitriols of them or are precipitating the 
copper in the metallic state. This leaching takes out all the 
sulphur, which mere burning could not do, and so the iron is 
left as an oxide of great purity. 

REMARKS. 

The great magnetite and hematite deposits of Lake Supe¬ 
rior are the choice ores of America, and they are corre¬ 
spondingly high in price, while the slates, especially the 
Damourite slates of the Potsdam group, furnish the cheap 
brown limonite ores from which the great bulk of ordinary 
foundry and mill irons are made. The Alabama ores, now so 
prominent, are found in all the formations from the Potsdam 
up through the Clinton to the Devonian groups, and this is 
the case in North Georgia, East Tennessee, and Southwest 
Virginia. 


90 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


MANGANESE. 


This metal oxidizes so rapidly that it is never found native. 
Its description is: 


Gravity.8.0 

Hardness, about.3.0 


Manganese.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, mild metallic; clearness, opaque; color, grayish- 
white; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; 
fracture, hackly; texture, massive, crystalline. 

It looks very much like white cast iron, and is used in 
making Speigeleisen, Ferro-Manganese, and for hardening 
other metals with which it is alloyed. It will not strike fire 
itself, but will cause its alloys with softer metals to do so. 


MANGANESE GLANCE. 


This is sulphide of manganese, and is very scarce; but as 
it is the source of all the other ores we will describe it: 


Gravity.5.0 Manganese.63 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 Sulphur.37 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, greenish-black; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, granular, cubic. 


PYROLUSITE. 

This is the peroxide of manganese, and is the first deriva¬ 
tive from the sulphide. It is as follows: 

Gravity...'..4.8 Manganese.63 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.3 Oxygen.37 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, grayish or 
bluisli-black; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, not 
perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, massive. 

This ore appears to be a clear case of the substitution of 
oxygen for the sulphur in the sulphide ore. The pyrolusite 
and the manganite ore next mentioned are both called per¬ 
oxide of manganese by the market, and they both sell in 
New York for about seventeen dollars per ton. They are 
used for bleaching and many other purposes in which oxygen 















IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 91 

is needed, as they give it off at much lower heats than most 
other available minerals. 


MANGANITE. 

This is simply pyrolusite, with a little water of hydration 
mixed in. Its points are as follows: 


Gravity.. .4.3 Manganese Oxide.90 p. ct. 

Hardness.4.0 Water.10 p. ct. 

Lustre, sub-metallic; clearness, opaque; color, steel gray 
to brown; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, fibrous, columnar. 

The addition of a little water makes this one-half harder 
than the pyrolusite, but such things will happen. Besides, 
the manganese oxide in this ore is not exactly the same as 
the pyrolusite, there being a small difference in the propor¬ 
tions of the manganese and the oxygen. 

PSILOMELANE. 

This is a sure-enough mixture, and its points are: 


Gravity.3.8 to 4.5 

Hardness.5.0 to 6.0 

Manganese Oxide.76 p. ct. 


Oxygen .15 p. ct 

Potash. 5 p. ct, 

Water and Sundries... 4 p. ct, 


Lustre, sub-metallic; clearness, opaque; color, brown 
black; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, massive to earthy. 

This ore is harder yet than the other oxides, but it is often 
earthy, or rather disintegrated and very soft. 


WAD. 

This is a mixture of the three foregoing oxides, together 
with any dirt which may happen to get in. It is nearly 
always in the earthy condition and sometimes very light in 
weight. The copper miners often mistake it for black oxide 
of copper, and swear accordingly. It { s apt to be in bogs 
and moist places, and varies so much m different parts of the 
same deposit that we will not attempt a description. 












92 


IRON AND MANGANESE ORES. 


RHODOCROCITE. 

This is carbonate of manganese or manganese spar, and 
its descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.3.6 Manganese Oxide.62 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.6 Carbonic Acid.38 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, gray, red, 
yellow, brown; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, per¬ 
fect ; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This ore is not so plentiful as the oxides, but it occurs 
along with them and is derived from them. They all occur 
in veins and beds among nearly all the formations but 
mostly in the secondary formation. 

REMARKS. 

Manganese ores and limonite iron ores are very apt to be 
found together, and the upper slates of the Potsdam group 
furnish the great bulk of manganese mined in this country. 
The Shenandoah Valley manganeses, notably the Crimora 
deposits, are in this group. 











V. 

GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


Gold—Vein Gold, in Pyrites, in Quartz, in Tellu¬ 
rium-Wash Gold, in Slate, in Sand, in Gravel, in 
Clay, in Sea Water —Gold Saving —Gold Testing. 
Silver—Silver Ores : Silver Glance, Horn Silver, 
Ruby Silver, Stephanite, Antimonial Silver, Miar- 

GYRITE, PoLYBASITE, ACANTHITE, STROMEYERITE, FrIES- 

lebenite—Silver Saving—Silver Testing. 


GOLD. 

The descriptive list of this most interesting substance 
reads about as follows: 

Gravity.......19.3 Gold...100 p. ct. 

Hardness. 2.5 Value.100 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, royal gold 
yellow. All pure gold is the same lordly color, and varia¬ 
tions are always due to impurities; feel, very smooth and 
comforting; elasticity, flexible, malleable, ductile in the 
highest degree; cleavage, none; fracture, wiry; texture, 
massive. 

Gold is about as universally distributed throughout the 
crust of the earth as any other metal, and it would be very 
difficult to find a whole formation entirely barren of it. But 
yet, somehow, we can find so very little of it in any one 
place that the work of gathering it together is very apt 









94 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES’ 


to cost more than the gold is worth. Nevertheless, although 
it comes high, we must have it, for it has those peculiarities 
which render it a fitting standard ol measurement for every¬ 
thing else in this world of finance, in that it combines more 
of the factors which produce unchangeableness in value than 
any other substance known to us. These factors are: 

1. The greatest resistance to loss by chemical changes, in 
that it does not oxidize or tarnish, and it alloys most per¬ 
fectly with other harder metals which protect it from loss by 
abrasion. 

2. Most unmistakable physical characteristics to guard 
against counterfeiting. It is the only yellow native metal. 
Other yellow metals can be made by man by alloying red and 
white metals, but they cannot be made so heavy as gold, and 
they can all be touched and eaten by simple acids, whereas 
gold can only be touched by compound acids, such as aqua 
regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid). 

3. Sufficient and reliable, but not excessive supplies of the 
metal. 

4. Excessive cost of production to secure the locking up 
of large amounts of labor value in'small coin packages, thus 
insuring high intrinsic value. 

As regards this latter qualification, it seems that its 
intrinsic value very largely exceeds its nominal value, for it 
is now quite well determined that all the gold produced in 
this country in any one year amounts, in face value, to only 
about one-fifth the value of the labor and supplies of all 
kinds expended in the gold industry that same year. The 
prizes are few but they are big, very big, and the losses 
are so many, but so small and so well distributed among a 
class of men who don’t care a continental anyhow, that we 
adventurous humans go on carelessly putting down five dol¬ 
lars and taking up one, having four dollars’ worth of fun for 
change, and hoping that our turn will come next. 

We work for our food and clothing in this world, although 
some of us do have terrapin and canvas-backs for food and 
clothe ourselves in brown-stone front houses. In temperate 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


95 


climates we are apt to overwork ourselves and produce a 
surplus which some of us expend in fattening kings, lords, 
politicians, star-route contractors, big standing armies and 
other absorbents; while others of us store the surplus up in 
various forms of wealth more or less subject to destruction, 
taxes and changes in value. This wealth or capital is always 
changing in value up or down, and in order to measure these 
changes we must have a substance as nearly free from 
change as possible to use as a recognized standard. This 
desideratum we find in gold, and as we must have it we pay 
in labor and supplies (the product of other labor) five times 
as much for the gold as the gold will buy back again, thus 
locking up irrevocably five values in one. 

VEIN GOfiD. 

Although gold is distributed among all rocks and forma¬ 
tions, its derivation from some earliest matrix is certain. 
Of course it came down originally out of the condensing 
gases along with all other terrestrial substances, but there 
are reasons for thinking that the golden rain was one of the 
earlier incidents of world building, and that it was subse¬ 
quently covered up by the deposits of lighter substances on 
top. In fact, it is not at all improbable that gold may be 
one of the metals which are supposed to constitute the 
central core of the globe, and which make the whole mass 
of the globe of a specific gravity of 5.2, while that of the 
crust of rocks, etc., is only about 2.6 on an average. This 
fact alone proves a great concentration of heavy substances 
at the centre of the globe; and as gold is so heavy in its 
metallic condition, and so energetically resists combination 
with other high fire-proof substances which would lighten 
it, there is strong probability that gold is an important con¬ 
stituent of this heavy core. 

Down among the bottom rocks of the primaries in the 
gneisses and granites we first find gold, and we find it asso¬ 
ciated with Pyrites or sulphide ores of iion, copper, silver 
and other metals. These sulphides are in veins, mostly true 
fissure veins, which open downwards into the great 


m 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


unknown, and show all the marks of having been filled with 
the pyritous ores by the injection from below of melted sub¬ 
stance and its subsequent cooling and crystallization. 

These fissures down in the lowest known formations and 
igneous rocks are generally filled from wall to wall with 
pyritous ores, but when we get up among the Huronian and 
lower Silurian rocks we find that great quantities of quartz 
are intermixed with the pyrites, and indeed the fissures are 
sometimes filled with quartz from wall to wall. Often the 
quartz and pyrites are in sheets or layers, alternating, accom¬ 
panied by barytes, calcite, and other common gangue rock of 
veins. 

It is an observed fact that the gold in the sulphides of the 
lower veins is infinitesimally small in grain, while that found 
up among the quartz is larger, and can even sometimes be 
seen in the quartz by the unaided eye. That in sulphides is 
so fine that very many particles are required to be gotten 
together to make a speck or “ color.” 

No man likes to say straight out that there is a natural 
gold sulphide, yet many claim that these invisible particles 
are really atomic, just freed from combination with sulphur, 
and become visible when aggregating into molecules of gold. 
Others claim that the gold is in flakes, or rather films of 
infinite thinness intercalated between the little cubical crys¬ 
tals of pyritous ores, as are the mortars and cements in the 
joints of brickwork or masonry. Others hold that each particle 
of gold is enveloped in a block or crystal of pyrites, and is 
freed mechanically by the crushing of this crystal, or chemi¬ 
cally by the oxidation of the pyrites in open-air weathering 
or in furnace treatment. Still another idea is that as gold in 
Nature is always alloyed with a little silver, copper or other 
metal, the sulphur lays hold of such other metal and forms a 
film of sulphide ore around the gold without actually com¬ 
bining with the gold itself. When this sulphide film is oxi¬ 
dized it becomes a film of oxide ore, and is then called 
“ rusty ’ gold by the maledictating miners, who can’t make 
their mercury lay hold of it. 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


97 


In veins containing much quartz the gold is found in both 
the quartz and the pyrites, but that in the quartz is gener¬ 
ally much larger in grain than that in the pyrites, although 
they may be in the closest proximity. Why this is thus, and 
how the gold traveled from the pyrites into the hard body 
of the quartz, are questions not yet answered satisfactorily. 
Then, again, the quartz will contain numerous little sharp- 
cornered cavities which formerly contained crystals of sul¬ 
phides which have become oxidized naturally, and the 
cavities now contain the brown iron oxide dust and the 
minute particles of gold which have been released by the 
oxidation. 

Gold is also found in veins of pure quartz with no admix¬ 
ture of sulphides, and no signs of there having ever been 
any there. In these cases the gold is all free gold, and apt 
to be in grains round in shape and large enough to be seen 
in the quartz with the naked eye, although very large 
fortunes have been made out of veins of this class in which 
the gold was invisible until the particles were concentrated. 
Some hold that the gold got into these quartz veins by pre¬ 
cipitation from some chlorine or other chemical solution 
included in the silicious mother-liquor out of which the 
quartz was crystallized. Others, that the gold was washed 
out of an igneous vein and washed into the open top of the 
quartz vein; and still others assert that the gold was origin¬ 
ally disseminated throughout the mass of the country rock, 
and was drawn into the fissure in some chlorine solution 
right through the wall rock by some sort of electricity. 

It is well to reflect that, perhaps, all the theories may be 
be right, some in one place, others in other places, and some 
cases may be the result of all acting together, reinforced by 
others not yet stated; and the best we can do is to say, 
Quien sabe ? 

The pyrites of the coal measures rarely contain gold, nor 
those of the tertiaries, but as a general proposition all others 
do in greater or less quantity. Those ores having a fine 
grain are the most auriferous, while those having large, 
whitish crystals, very hard, are least auriferous. 


98 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


The quartz intermixed in pyritic veins is vitreous quartz, 
and is nearly always auriferous, while vitreous quartz in a 
vein all to itself is rarely so. A quartz which has a granular, 
sugary appearance is frequently auriferous; and massive, 
milky-looking quartz is rarely good for much. 

Sometimes a sulphide and quartz vein is found in which 
the sulphides have oxidized into a brown iron ore all the 
way down to the water level of the locality, and down to 
that level it pays to work it, as the gold is free from sulphur, 
but below that level the sulphides are hard and close, and 
the money made out of the upper levels goes back again 
into the mine in the lower levels, unless the workers have 
been sagacious enough to unload the property at the right 
time and give others a chance. 

There is a true gold ore which sometimes is found and 
worked, but no one knows of any money that has ever been 
made out of it. It is called Sylvanite, and is a Gold Telluride , 
as follows: 

Gravity.8.2 I Silver.16 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.8 Tellurium.56 p. ct. 

Gold.28-p. ct. | 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, white to brass 
yellow; feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular to massive. 

This is vein gold; but, although some good-sized veins of 
it are known, the stuff is so brittle that it breaks finer than 
sand, and cannot be washed out. 

WASH GOLD. 

When a hill traversed by an auriferous vein is cut into and 
washed down by water, the materials of which it is built are 
spread out on the adjoining lower lands, and the vein gold 
thus carried away and deposited in strange places is called 
wash gold, or allyvial gold, or placer gold. A majority of 
the gold now in possession of man has thus been washed 
into piles by natural causes. We humans were very much 
more apt to pick up gold in river beds and gravel or clay 







GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


99 


banks than to drill out the hard rocks to get it, especially in 
the earlier days of the race, when we had not invented blast¬ 
ing powder, dynamite and other little conveniences. Now 
that we are older and are training up experts in mining as 
well as in medicine, etc., the percentage of total gold product 
credited to regular mining is much greater than that from 
washing and re-washing Mother Nature’s piles of tailings. 

It is evident that, from the time when the water first came 
down on the naked rock of the globe all the way to the 
present, there has been no period in which vein matter was 
not liable to be washed down and deposited elsewhere, and 
we must accordingly expect to find wash gold in any or all 
the formations down to the lowest point known. As a 
matter of fact, most of the gold in Georgia is found dissemi¬ 
nated in minute particles throughout the whole mass of 
great formations of stratified slate rocks. Those slates are 
the micaceous, the talcose, the chlorite and the clay slates of 
the primaries. These slates are more or less gold-bearing 
over whole counties, and are sedimentary rocks, beyond all 
question, formed of the debris from the washing down of 
other rocks containing gold or gold veins. In other words, 
they are simply “placers” of the ancient days which have 
lain so long undisturbed that they have compacted into hard 
slates. The gold mines now worked in Brazil are of this 
nature and age of formation, and much of the Australian 
gold is similarly placed. Nearly all of the above-named 
slates along the Atlantic slope are auriferous, and in many 
other localities than those in Georgia they can be profitably 
worked. 

On the coast of California there are great hills of alluvial 
formation forming clay bluffs with narrow sandy beaches. 
Every time a storm blows up such a sea as to wash up 
against the base of the bluffs the waves undermine portions 
of the bluff and wash the materials down upon the beach 
and out to sea. There is a little gold disseminated through¬ 
out the mass of these bluffs, probably a couple of cents’ 
worth to a cubic yard, and while the waves wash out the 


100 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


clay and lighter portions the gold particles are dropped 
along the immediate shore, where they are collected by men 
who are not looking for big profits. 

Among the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, on the Cali¬ 
fornia side, the streams which head in the Sierras all run 
westerly to the San Joaquin and the Sacramento, and they 
have cut out deep gorges in their passages through the foot¬ 
hills. These gorges cut across and reveal in cross section 
the gravel bottom of an immense ancient river which ran 
north and south high up among the tops of these foothills. 
The great river is no longer there, the water having been 
turned in some other direction by some upheaval, but the 
valley is filled up hundreds of feet deep by gravels, clays, 
etc., which in many places are roofed over by a great cap of 
lava, also hundreds of feet thick. Along the edges of the 
banks of gravel, forming the bed of the river, are found the 
remains of a race of creatures who used fire and made 
pottery, and otherwise behaved like men; and among the 
gravel itself is found the greatest quantity of gold that Cali¬ 
fornia has yet produced. The whole formation is called the 
Blue Lead, and the gold in the gravel is wash gold, derived 
from some gold region which has not yet been discovered. 

Here in front of us is a plane hillside with moderate slope. 
Up near the top is a mass of auriferous quartz, but those 
other fellows don’t know it, as it is covered by earth. It is 
the end of a vein, which has been there so long that a large 
chunk of it has been weathered and washed down the hill¬ 
side. We fill a pan with earth and gravel, etc., dug 
down at the bottom of the hill, and take it to the nearest 
stream, where we wash it, until we find a little sand and 
just a color of gold left in the lower edge. We repeat this 
at points ten feet apart along the base of the hill, working 
each way until we cease to find a color in the pan. The 
distance along the base of the hill between the two points 
where we cease to find color is the base of a triangle, and 
the apex is the spot where we will find the end of the vein, 
if we go to the middle of the base, and then work straight 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


101 


up the hillside, panning the earth as we go, until we cease 
to find color in that direction also. Dig into the hill at that 
point and find the ledge, and remember that from that spot 
down to the base of the hill the wash gold spreads out like 
a fan. If the hill slope is not plane, but rather convex, the 
base of the triangle will be longer and the wash gold will be 
spread over a bigger fan; but if the face of the hill is con¬ 
cave the wash gold will be mostly confined to a narrow 
streak, and, therefore, more easily collected. 

When the hill slope is so very concave as to amount really 
to a valley or gulch, the wash gold will be found always in 
the bottom of the gulch, and at those points where little 
catch-basins are naturally formed. As a general proposi¬ 
tion, the finer the particles of gold the further down will 
they be washed, so that the prospector may always count on 
finding something better up the hill when he gets very small 
colors in his pan. 

The Potsdam sandstone, the great plate forming the base 
of the secondary formation, and forming the cap rock of the 
Blue Ridge, and also exposed in much less thickness on 
Lake Superior and on the eastern flank of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, has from two to ten cents’ worth of gold disseminated 
throughout every cubic yard of it that has yet been thor¬ 
oughly examined. 

The brick clays along the Atlantic coast are all more or 
less auriferous, and it is estimated that there is more gold in 
the clay under the city of Philadelphia than would pay for 
the rebuilding of the city, but nevertheless the clay is worth 
more for bricks than for gold ore. 

The water of the sea is found to contain a grain of gold 
to every ton of water, but that gold is most irrevocably 
locked up, although it is estimated to be greater in quantity 
than all the gold now in use. It is in the shape of gold 
chloride, and its existence in this condition induced a wise 
man of the West to “fix” a spring in California with some 
buried gold chloride, and then reproduced the gold in the 
presence of sundry victims, who bought some of his watered 


103 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


bonanza stock on the strength of it. They couldn’t doubt 
their own eyesight, you know, and thej r have the stock yet 
as a permanent investment in experience, while the wise man 
has the money. 

GOLD SAVING. 

To get the scattered gold particles concentrated into one 
place, so as to possess them, is one of the great industrial 
problems of this day and generation, and several thousand 
patents on inventions for gold saving have been issued by 
the American Patent Office. Some of these inventions have 
been good, some very bad, and most of them merely indif¬ 
ferent. Those that have been good have been based on a 
close imitation of natural processes. 

Nature uses water to cut down and spread out the hill 
containing the sulphide vein, and then lets the air act on the 
exposed sulphides for long periods, and they become oxi¬ 
dized, thus freeing the gold particles. Man does the same 
thing by digging out the sulphides, roasting them with 
access of air at high heat to drive off the sulphur, oxidize 
the ores, and set free the gold particles. Nature takes plenty 
of time to do her work, and she is not very short-lived, while 
man has but seventy years to live, and he must realize on his 
investment before he steps down and out. 

Nature turns on her water again after having freed her 
gold, and by some mysterious process she aggregates her 
small particles into larger ones, and washes them down 
grade, concentrating them as they go at every little crevice 
or resting place, and driving the sands and impurities out of 
them and on down out of the way, so that man can come 
along afterwards and dig out the gold particles from their 
lodging places. Man pulverizes his oxidized sulphides, and, 
using water, he washes the ores down long sluices with 
riffles on their bottoms to imitate the crevices that were used 
by Nature to stop her gold, while the sands and other im¬ 
purities were swept on down stream. 

In general terms, the above two steps, viz.: the pulveriza¬ 
tion and oxidation to free the gold from attached impurities, 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


103 


and the washing and concentration to free the gold irom 
intermixed impurities are the necessary two steps in all pro¬ 
cesses of gold saving, but many additional small steps have 
been invented which facilitate matters. The chief of these 
is in the lugging in of mercury, which assists in two ways in 
separating the gold from its associate minerals. Mercury is 
a fluid and has a specific gravity of 13.6 commonly, but when 
entirely pure is 14. Now gold at a gravity of 19.3 will 
promptly sink in a bath of mercury, while iron oxides rang¬ 
ing in gravity from 3.4 to 5, or quartz or any other substance 
lighter than mercury will float on the surface of the bath. 
By stirring the auriferous sands around on the surface of the 
bath in such a way as to bring all the gold particles to the 
surface they will drop out of the sand and sink in the 
mercury. 

The other way in which mercury assists in separating the 
gold is by amalgamating with it and forming a new com¬ 
pound metal. A gold coin put in a bath of mercury will 
disappear very quickly, first by sinking and next by amal¬ 
gamation, and the gold can be recovered again by straining 
the mercury through a piece of chamois skin and then burn- 
irfg off the remaining mercury, leaving the gold in a fine, 
brown powder. This powder, mixed with some saltpetre 
and melted in a ladle, will leave a gold button containing all 
the gold. 

In order to utilize mercury in this latter way the surface 
of the gold particles in the sand must be bright and clean of 
all greasy matters and rust. Metal must touch metal, or 
they will not amalgamate. The gold released from sul¬ 
phides by natural slow oxidation is bright and clean, but 
that released by roasting is nearly always coated with a film 
of iron oxide, due to the rapidity of oxidation, and this film 
has to be broken up before the contact of metal to metal for 
amalgamation can be obtained. This is done to a large 
extent by grinding the pulverized ore in big pans having 
mullers working in them, and having mercury mixed in 
with the ore. The grinding polishes the gold and the mer- 


104 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


cury immediately lays hold of it, thus loading down each 
particle so that it can be more easily captured in the subse¬ 
quent washing, concentrating and settling processes. 

In the formation of vein matter by means of chloride 
solutions of gold man finds another of Nature’s processes 
worthy of imitation, but he imitates it backward by satu-' 
rating the crushed ore with water and then forcing chlorine 
gas into it. This gas dissolves the gold, and the solution* 
comes out of the tub as an amber-colored fluid and the gold, 
in form of a rusty powder, is precipitated out of the fluid by 
pouring in a solution of sulphate of iron. 

Man also imitates Nature again, and most successfully, 
too, by washing down whole hills by means of water. The 
Blue Lead of California was worked on a very small scale 
for some years by tunneling in on the gravel bed; but some 
men brought a hose pipe full of high-pressure water from 
a neighboring waterfall, and found that the water would 
undermine, cut down, and wash into the sluices more ma¬ 
terials in one day than the same men could do with pick and 
shovel in a month. In a very short time the picks aiid 
shovels were all at work, for a hundred miles up and down 
the Lead, digging ditches and canals to bring the waters of 
the mountain streams and lakes down to the mines, and the 
new method was everywhere adopted. Sluices miles in 
length, eight and ten feet wide, with riffles, filled with mer¬ 
cury, every few feet of length, became the order of the day, 
and the farmers in the low lands began to complain about 
the silt and sand covering their farms and ruining them, and 
the laws now prohibit this method almost entirely, and it 
can only be used in cases where the miners buy up all the 
land which can be affected by their operations. 

Some valleys were so filled up that the miners who were 
driven away from the old river bars by the filling up have 
again resumed work on the same bars, gaining access to 
them by sinking shafts down through fifty to a hundred feet 
of filled up sand, and then drifting from the shaft bottoms 
out over the old gravel beds in various directions. 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


105 


There are differences of opinion among mining men con¬ 
cerning the advantages or disadvantages of dry washing, 
so-called, but there are large tracts of placer ground so 
situated that water cannot be obtained, and dry separation 
must be resorted to or the work abandoned. 

A blast of air, whether natural or artificial, is a great 
thing in such districts. A space is laid out, beaten down 
hard, and the auriferous sands, well dried, are tossed up into 
the air, where the wind blows away the particles of lighter 
specific gravity and the heavier ones drop on the prepared 
floor. Several sweepings up and re-tossing finally result in 
a very fair concentration. 

These dry placers as well as pulverized vein stuff have 
been successfully worked by raking the sands over the top 
of a broad and shallow mercury bath, and the gold sepa¬ 
rated from the sands, whether rusty or not, by sinking into 
the bath while the sands were passed over the sides when thus 
“washed.” If there was a liquid of about 6 or 7 specific 
gravity it would be a most valuable medium for this dry 
washing, as the gold would sink into it so much more 
rapidly than into mercury, while all ordinary refuse, even 
including black iron-sand, would still float on the surface. 

GOLD TESTING. 

The only absolute test for determining the presence of 
gold is by dissolving the specimen of rock or sand or other 
suspected substance in nitro-hydrochloric acid (aqua regia), 
and then pouring into the clear solution some dissolved 
sulphate of iron (copperas). This will precipitate to the 
bottom, in the form of a reddish-brown powder, any gold 
that may be in the solution. Rub this brown powder with 
the blade of a knife and it will come out in true gold colors. 
If you have weighed the specimen, then you can weigh the 
gold and ascertain the percentage of value in the ore. Aqua 
regia is made up of two parts hydrochloric (muriatic) acid 
and one part of nitric acid, and it is the only acid which will 
dissolve gold. Gold melts at about 2,600 degrees. 


106 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


A usual method to ascertain practically the value of 
pyrites is to pulverize a weighed specimen to about the size 
of fine sand, then roast it at a red heat (not too hot) until 
no more sulphur fumes arise, then pulverize it again to as 
fine a grain as you can get it with a hammering and rubbing 
motion, then wash off all the lighter stuff by panning, then 
put it in a china cup with a half teaspoonful of mercury and 
mix it for half an hour with a wooden stick, then wash off 
everything except the mercury, then put the cup on a shovel 
and heat it carefully over a fire until all the mercury is 
driven off in fumes, and the reddish-brown powder left in 
in the cup is about all the gold there was in the specimen. 

Quartz specimens can be treated in the same way. The 
roasting of quartz and suddenly dropping it hot into cold 
water is good for it. 


SILVER. 


This is another interesting substance, but not quite so 
interesting as gold. Its descriptive list, like that of all good 
things, is short, as follows: 


Gravity.10.5 

Hardness. 2.6 


Silver .100 p. ct. 


Lustre, brilliantly metallic; clearness, opaque in mass, but 
can be made so thin as to be translucent; color, silver white; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, malleable, with tendency to elastic; 
cleavage, none; fracture, uneven, and draws down into wire 
before breaking; texture, massive, but sometimes in crystal¬ 
line forms. 

Silver is not quite so well fitted for coinage purposes as 
gold. It is readily acted on by nitric acid and tardily by 
other simple acids. Our wives know how quickly it 
blackens when used in eggs, and what trouble salt gives 
them, and how much renovating silver requires after having 
been packed up any length of time. The sulphur in the 
eggs forms an important silver ore (the sulphide of silver) 







GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


107 


with the outer surface of the silver, and rubbing it off takes 
away just so much silver each time. The same is true of 
the packed-up silver, the tarnish being produced by the 
small amount of sulphuretted hydrogen which is always 
present in the air. The tarnish from salt is the chloride of 
silver, and reduces the weight of the silver as much as the 
sulphide does at every fresh polishing. 

Silver is easily imitated by making up alloys of other less 
precious metals. The weight of silver is little more than 
half that of gold, and there are many metals that can be 
brought together to counterfeit it in weight and appear¬ 
ance. It is also considered that, with the opening up of the 
old silver districts of Mexico and Peru to the introduction 
of American miners and mining processes and speculators, 
the supply of silver will become excessive in the near future. 

For these and other reasons gold is the standard among 
nearly all people of Teutonic parentage, including the 
Germans, British and United Statesians, and we (number¬ 
ing one hundred and thirty millions of people, doing three- 
fourths of all business done in the world,) insist on measuring, 
buying, and selling silver according to a gold standard, not 
gold by a silver standard. 

We use silver for money metal in all those cases where 
gold coin would be so small as to be easily lost, but there is 
still a point left which is not fully provided for. This point 
is the interval between fifty cents and five dollars of Ameri¬ 
can money. A gold coin below five dollars in size is too 
easily lost, and a silver coin above fifty cents in size is exces¬ 
sively inconvenient on account of its bulk. To fill in this 
interval an alloy to be called “goloid” has been proposed, 
which shall be of gold and silver in stated proportions, so 
arranged as to make the one, two, and three dollar coins of 
sizes convenient but different from any other coin. At 
present this gap is covered by Treasury notes and by clumsy 
silver dollars, affectionately called stove lids, which no one 
wants to carry around, and which contain only about seventy 
cents’ worth of silver, counted at present market prices. 


108 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


The Treasury Department has recently put out a scheme 
for buying silver at current market quotations and paying 
for it in certificates calling for as many dollars as the silver 
is worth that day, these certificates to he paid in silver at 
market quotations on the day of presentation or in gold at 
the Treasury option. This scheme has been sneered at as 
being the same thing as the well-known pig-iron warrants 
scheme applied to silver, but it is really very different, for 
the iron warrant is paid in so many tons of pig iron, regard¬ 
less of market price, while the silver certificate calls for so 
many dollars’ worth of silver at the market price. 

A very large and increasing business is done in this coun¬ 
try through the mails, and much of this is paid for by 
remitting one and two dollar bills enclosed in ordinary letter 
envelopes, not even registered, for the thief rarely gets time 
to go through any but the registered mail. And this retail 
business, so long as one and two dollar silver certificates are 
issued, will continue to grow, and this book which you are 
reading will continue to circulate and do good, but all this 
will stop when we have nothing less than five dollars except 
silver coinage. 

Silver is the favorite money standard among the Chinese 
and neighboring peoples, and were it not for the fact that 
these Asiatics absorb every year about forty million ounces 
of silver it is tolerably clear that the price of silver would 
drop to a much lower level than it now occupies, and in the 
near future, too. Let us hope that the gentry with the yel¬ 
low exteriors may continue in the same frame of mind for 
ages to come, and even increase their demands for the white 
metal, for they are now the chief consumers of an important 
American product, and one, too, which, by the nature of 
things, we cannot protect against competition by a tariff. 

Native silver is found in nearly all the silver ore districts, 
but it don’t amount to much in any district, except Lake 
Superior. It is nearly always found intermixed with silver 
ores, and is the result of some sort of natural smelting, or 
of a decomposition process. It is found in grains in the 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


109 


massive native copper of Lake Superior; and in the Silver 
Islet mine it is the chief product of value. Silver Islet is 
a little rocky peak, sticking up out of the water a mile or so 
from the north shore of the lake, and is about sixty or 
seventy feet square. This little patch is a high point in 
a submerged dyke of diorite rock, and is cut by a vein 
fissure filled with carbonates of lime and magnesia as the 
gangue rock. Sulphide ores of zinc, copper, nickel, cobalt 
and silver are scattered through the gangue, and native 
silver in sheets, strings and nuggets is found as well as the 
ores. The little island was enlarged by coffer-dams, etc., 
and the mining is now down a thousand feet or more, and 
over three million dollars’ worth of profits are said to have 
been made. This is about the only place where native silver 
amounts to enough to make it the main object, and this has 
now been worked out, after a large amount of profits have 
been put back into the hole. There are many rumors coming 
out of the woods oh the north shore of discoveries of silver 
and gold, and every Spring sees its lot of cheerful prospectors 
going into the wilderness, and every Winter sees them coming 
out again to work for a living. 

SILVER ORES. 

About ninety-nine per cent, of all the silver in use has 
been reduced from the various ores of silver, of which there 
are four chief ones. These ores are never found absolutely 
free from admixture with ores of other metals, and their 
general condition is just the opposite. The following four 
chief ores are the important ones, the others being of com¬ 
paratively rare occurrence except in laboratories and mineral 
cabinets: 

SILVER GLANCE. 

Argentite is the christened name of this ore, and the family 
name is Silver Sulphide. Its descriptive list is as follows: 


Gravity.. 

Hardness 


.7.2 to 7.4 
2.0 to 2.4 


Silver.., 

Sulphur 


,87 p. ct. 
13 p. ct. 







110 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, dark gray; 
feel, rough; elasticity, somewhat malleable; cleavage, none; 
fracture, uneven; texture, small granular. 

This is the richest possible ore of silver, but it has a sad 
habit of getting itself mixed up with sulphides of other 
metals. Mixed with galena it makes what is called silver 
lead ores. Mixed with black jack it is in its worst condi¬ 
tion, for it is extremely difficult to get the zinc out of it. 
This ore and the double sulphide of silver and antimony, 
called stephanite, are the big ores of the Comstock lode, 
the greatest depository of silver yet discovered. 

HORN SILVER 

This ore is scientifically called Cerargyrite, and is silver 
chloride, just as silver glance is silver sulphide. Its descrip¬ 
tion is as below: 

Gravity.5.4 to 5.6 I Silver.75 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.0 to 1.4 Chlorine.35 p. ct. 

Lustre, resinous; clearness, translucent to opaque; color^ 
gray to greenish-gray; feel, smoothisli; elasticity, sectile to 
brittle; cleavage, none; fracture, small granular; texture, 
massive. 

When long exposed to the weather this ore turns black, 
or purplish-brown. When freshly cut it looks much like 
wax or translucent horn, when pure, but when impure it 
resembles old dried putty. This is the great ore of the 
Leadville and other carbonate silver-mining regions. The 
carbonates which we all hear so much about are carbonates 
of lead and iron, and the silver chloride is mechanically 
intermixed with the carbonates of the other metals. These 
ores may be very rich in silver, and yet may look like so 
much sand—reddish, yellowish, or any other sandy color— 
and be passed over day after day without arousing curiosity. 
They have no sign of metallic lustre, and the only sus¬ 
picious feature about them is their extra weight. These are 
called sand carbonates. 






GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


Ill 


Another Leadville ore is the hard carbonate, which has to 
be mined and often blasted to loosen it. It has a decided 
metallic appearance, looking much like iron ore, and it con¬ 
tains sometimes many hundred dollars’ worth of silver 
chlorides per ton. The chloride is so finely intermixed with 
the carbonate as to be indistinguishable in many cases. 

While silver sulphides are mostly found in true fissure 
veins, the chlorides are found not only in veins, but in beds 
between other rocks and in pockets. The Leadville deposits 
are generally situated on the line of contact between a lime¬ 
stone and a sheet of porphyritic trap rock. Sometimes the 
carbonate and chloride bed or sheet will be fifty feet in 
thickness, and in a hundred feet distance it will shut down 
until nothing but a sheet or film of rust will separate the 
lime and trap rocks. The keys to unlock all the mysteries of 
these peculiar formations have not been found yet, but good 
progress is being made. 

In the Silver Cliff district of Colorado there is an immense 
overflow or sheet of trachytic trap, which rock is impreg¬ 
nated throughout with silver chloride, and they just quarry 
the trachyte and send it to mill. They don’t succeed 
well, as the silver only runs from six to fifteen dollars per 
ton, and they have not yet invented suitable milling pro¬ 
cesses to work such low-grade ores. It is to be hoped that a 
richer carbonate ore will be discovered in the neighborhood, 
so that the chlorides and carbonates can be mixed, and thus 
make up a good smelting ore. 

There are fissure veins in that same vicinity which are 
filled with a gangue composed of pebbles and boulders of 
various kinds of rock, all cemented together by silver 
chloride, and there are others, where the fissure is filled with 
slabs, blocks and gravels, cemented in the same way with 
horn silver. 

The great Horn Silver mine, in Utah, is believed to be a 
fissure vein, and is filled with all sorts of materials contain¬ 
ing silver chloride intermixed throughout. In Arizona, the 
two ores, sulphides and chlorides, appear frequently in the 


112 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES 


same vein, the sulphides getting richer with depth and the 
chlorides poorer, and the third great ore, ruby silver, is fre¬ 
quently found mixed in with them. 

RUBY SILVER. 

This ore is also called Pyrargyrite, but w r e are not expected 
to use this name until it has been passed through the jaws 
of Blake’s crusher a time or two. Its points are as follows: 


Gravity.5.6 to 6.0 

Hardness.2.1 to 2.4 

Silver.60 p. ct. 


Sulphur.18 p. ct. 

Antimony.22 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic-vitreous; clearness, opaque to translu¬ 
cent ; color, red to black; feel, smoothish; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, between perfect and imperfect; fracture, conch- 
oidal to uneven; texture, massive-crystalline. There is 
another variety, called Proustite , which is of a lighter red in 
color, more transparent, not so plentiful, and contains 
arsenic instead of antimony. 

These ruby ores constitute large portions of the total 
product of some localities, but they are never found as the 
only silver ore present. 

STEPHANITE. 

This is very similar in composition to the ruby silver ores, 
but is dissimilar in appearance. Its descriptive list is as 
below: 


Gravity. 6.1 to 6.3 

Hardness.2.0 to 2.5 

Silver.68 p. ct. 


Sulphur.16 p. ct. 

Antimony.16 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, black; feel, 
harsh; elasticity, brittle to slightly sectile; cleavage, none; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular to massive. 

This ore and the sulphide make up the main body of the 
silver ores of the Comstock lode, and this ore is found 
almost everywhere that silver is produced. It has the same 
ugly habit of associating with the zinc ores that the silver 
glance has, and it is even more difficult to corral the zinc and 
expel the silver, or corral the silver and expel the zinc, than 
in case of the straight silver sulphide. 














GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


113 


ANTIMONIAL SILVER. 

The description of this ore is as follows: 

Gravity.9.8 Silver.78 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.8 Antimony. ..22 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, white; feel, 
rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, distinct; fracture, un¬ 
even ; texture, granular. 

Dysclasite is its other name, and it is not abundant, so far 
as known. 

MIARGYRITE. 


This is another silver ore, and its points are: 

Gravity.5.3 Antimony.42 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.3 Sulphur. 21 p. ct. 

Silver.37 p. ct. 


Lustre, sub-metallic; clearness, opaque to sub-translu¬ 
cent ; color, black reddish; feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven to sub-conchoidal; 
texture, tabular. 

This is not an abundant ore, and there is a variety of it 
called Hypargyrite. 

POLYBASITE. 

This is another sulphide of silver and antimony, and its 
descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.6.2 Antimony.10 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.5 Sulphur.15 p. ct. 

Silver.75 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, black; feel, 
rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, tabular, foliated to massive. 


ACANTHITE. 

This is a silver sulphide, and its points are : 

Gravity.7.2 Silver.87 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.4 Sulphur.13 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, black; feel, 
rough; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, imperfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, tabular. 
























114 


GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


STROMEYERITE. 

This is another case of silver sulphide, and its descriptive 
list is as follows: 

Gravity.6.2 Copper .31 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.8 Sulphur.16 p. ct. 

Silver.53 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, dark gray; 
feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, 
conchoidal; texture, massive. 

The copper in this ore is enough to more than pay ex¬ 
penses, leaving the silver -as profit. 


FREISLEBENITE. 

The German who named this ore has not yet announced 
its pronunciation, but its points are: 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 
Silver .... 


.6.2 

.'.2.3 

24 p. ct. 


Lead. 

Antimony 

Sulphur... 


30 p. ct. 
27 p. ct. 
19 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque to translucent; color, 
grayish-wliite; elasticity, sectile to brittle; cleavage, per¬ 
fect; fracture, sub-conchoidal; texture, massive to tabular. 

The last six ores are not known to be abundant, but are 
described, as they may yet be found abundantly. 


SILVER SAVING. 

The extraction of metallic silver from its ores is a com¬ 
plicated process chemically, but yet there are cases where 
the manipulation part of it is very simple. The first Ameri¬ 
can process was that carried on by the aid of the Washoe 
pan, and was invented by the Comstockers, who wished to 
substitute cheap rotary motion for more expensive longi¬ 
tudinal sluice work. The silver sulphides are first stamped 
to the requisite fineness, then put into the big Washoe pans 
and ground still finer in water heated by steam, then quick¬ 
silver is put into the pans, the grinders raised, but stirring 
motion continued, until the silver has all been amalgamated 
by tho mercury, after which the muddy liquid amalgam and 















GOLD AND SILVER ORES. 


115 


all is transferred into settling vats, diluted with clear water, 
and afterwards washed like gold amalgam, and the mercury- 
retorted, leaving the silver. 

An improvement on this simple process was the dosing 
the pulp in the pans with sulphate of copper, which 
assisted in decomposing the silver sulphides. Roasting the 
ores with a percentage of salt chloridized the silver and 
drove out the sulphur; and many other chemical substances 
have been experimented with and produced result of more 
or less value. 

One very quiet little plan of extracting silver is to leach 
silver chlorite (or roasted and chloridized silver sulphides) 
with salt brine; and silver sulphate (produced by roasting 
and oxidizing sulphide ores) can be leached by means of 
water acidulated with sulphuric acid. Strips of metallic 
copper will precipitate the metallic silver out of either the 
brine or acidulated water solutions. 

The chloride ores can be treated by the leaching process 
also, but as they are usually mixed with carbonates of other 
metals, and these other metals will sometimes pay for the 
whole cost of extraction, the smelting process is the favorite 
in the chloride mines. The neatest smelting in the countty 
is done at Leadville. 

SILVER TESTING. 

To test a piece of lead ore for silver, dissolve it in nitric 
acid and drop in a piece of copper, when the silver will drop 
to the bottom if there is any silver. A little salt water 
dropped in instead of the copper will curdle up into white 
clouds in the acid. 

To test copper ore for silver, dissolve the ore in nitric 
acid, and add some drops of muriatic acid, when a white 
precipitate will appear on the bottom if there is any silver 
in the ore. 

The silver sulphides and chlorides can be detected by 
powdering them and roasting them with a little salt. Then 
put in mercury and amalgamate; wash and retort as in the 
case of gold. 


VI. 

COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


Copper—Chalcopyrite, Enargite, Tetrahedrite, Ciial- 
cocite, Bornite, Melaconite, Cuprite, Chryso- 
colla. Tin — Tinstone, Stannite. 


COPPER. 


Copper is mostly derived from its ores, but the Lake Su- 
perior copper region furnishes great quantities of native 
copper. Its points are: 


Gravity.;.8.8 

Hardness,.2.8 


Copper 


100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, red; feel, 
smooth; elasticity, flexible, malleable; cleavage, none; frac¬ 
ture, uneven, ragged; texture, massive. 

Native copper is also found sparingly among the rocks of 
the Triassic group with the New Red sandstone, in the 
Atlantic States. A few localities are also reported in the 
Territories. All native copper is supposed to be derived 
from some of its ores, by some process of natural smelting 
or solution and precipitation. The native copper of Lake 
Superior is found in veins filled with quartz, spar, and epi- 
dote, and other gangue rock, which veins pierce the great 
trap range or dyke, and frequently extend into the Silurian 
sandstones on either side of the trap ridge. 

It is supposed that the great trap dyke (which here makes 
semi-mountains twelve hundred feet high) was first upheaved 








COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


117 


and then split by shrinkage-fissures as it cooled; that these 
fissures were filled with gangue rock and copper sulphides 
after the usual fashion, and that these copper sulphides were 
afterwards smelted in place by a fresh attack of subter¬ 
ranean heat, which drove out the sulphur without giving 
access to oxygen enough to oxidize the copper. The result 
of this, or whatever operation it may have been, has been 
that the metallic copper is now met with in great masses, 
requiring years of labor to cut them up into pieces small 
enough to be handled. At other points in the same vein are 
found great bodies of vein rock stuck full of shot copper, 
like currants in a fruit cake. The stocks of the mining com¬ 
panies rise when they find the shot copper, as it is so easy to 
extract and send to market. 

CHALCOPYRITE. 

This is the leanest of the principal copper ores, but it is 
also the most important, as it is very much the most abund¬ 
ant. It description is as follows: 

Gravity.4.2 Iron.30 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.7 Sulphur.35 p. ct. 

Copper.35 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, brass or light 
orange-yellow, feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle to sectile; 
cleavage, not perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular. 

This ore is called copper pyrites, and it is the definite 
chemical compound, but it is not to be confounded with the 
many mechanical compounds usually called by that name. A 
ten-pound specimen of sulphide ore may contain nine pounds 
of iron pyrite, having one pound of true copper pyrite dis¬ 
tributed through it in pieces, and yet the very wise will call 
the whole lump copper pyrites, and marvel much when the 
assayer reports it as containing only three and a half per 
cent, of copper. 

ENARGITE. 

This sulphide of copper and arsenic is as follows: 








118 


COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


Gravity .4.4 Copper.48 p. ct. 

Hardness .3.0 Arsenic.20 p. ct. 

Sulphur.32 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, gray to black; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, granular, columnar. 

Varieties of this ore contain antimony or iron, and they 
are all found with other copper ores. 

TETRAHEDRITE. 

This is a big ore and deserves a big name, but the miners 
call it “ Gray Copper' 1 and fahlerz. Its description is: 


Gravity... 
Hardness. 
Copper..., 
Antimony 


5.0 

3.5 to 4.5 
, 35 p. ct. 
.20 p. ct. 


Sulphur. 

Arsenic. 

Iron. 

Zinc, etc 


30 p. ct. 
7 p. ct. 
5 p. ct. 
3 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, gray; feel, 
harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, 
conchoidal to uneven; texture, granular to massive. 

This ore has still other relations, such as silver and mer¬ 
cury, and occasionally gold, which lodge with it at times. 
This ore and clialcopyrite are the great producers of the 
copper of commerce, and generally are associated in the 
same veins, together with chalcocite, which is the purest of 
the sulphides of copper. 


CHALCOCITE. 

This is also sometimes called gray copper, but its best 
name is vitreous copper or copper glance. It is very rich, will 
melt in the flame of a candle, and is found in veins with 
other sulphides. Its points are: 

Gravity.5.6 Copper.80 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.7 Sulphur.20 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, gray; feel, 
t harsh; elasticity, sectile; cleavage, indistinct; fracture, con¬ 
choidal ; texture, granular to massive, crystalline. 






















COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


119 


BORNITE 

This is the purple copper , or horse-flesh copper, of the 
miners, and is found in veins with other sulphides. Its 
points are: 

Gravity.5.0 1 Iron.16 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 Sulphur.20 p. ct. 

Copper.55 p. ct. | 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, coppery-red; 
feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, massive to 
granular, 

MELACONITE. 

This is the black copper of the miners, and its descriptive 
list is as follows : 

Gravity.6.2 Copper.80 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.0 to 3.0 Oxygen.20 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic to dull earthy; clearness, opaque; color, 
gray to black; feel, harsh to greasy; elasticity, brittle to 
flexible; cleavage, indistinct; fracture, uneven; texture, 
foliated to massive and earthy. 

This black oxide of copper is most usually found as an 
upper layer in veins containing the copper sulphides, and 
results from the air and rain water getting into the upper 
portion of the vein and oxidizing the sulphides. Many 
copper veins in this country have large amounts of “ gossan ” 
on the immediate outcrop, resulting from the oxidation of 
the iron pyrites, and under this gossan, speckled with 
malachite, comes the black oxide of copper. Under this 
again comes the red oxide of copper (next described), and 
under this the copper sulphides. 

CUPRITE. 

This is the red oxide of copper, and is the rarest, as well 
as the richest, of all the principal copper ores. Its descrip¬ 
tive list is as follows: 












120 


COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


Gravity. 6.0 

Hardness.3.6 


Copper.. 

Oxygen. 


.80 p. ct. 

.11 p. ct. 


Lustre, sub-metallic to earthy; clearness, translucent to 
opaque; color, red; feel, harsli; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
distinct to imperfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular 
to earthy. 

This ore, like the black oxide, is found at times in a crys¬ 
talline condition, but also like black oxide, it is most often 
in an earthy condition and will soil the fingers if wet. The 
red colors of the pure ore are very brilliant and are much 
used for paint; but there is a rare variety called tile ore, 
which is a dark brick-red or brown, and contains iron oxides 
generally. These red oxide ores of copper are not nearly 
so abundant as the black oxides, but they are nearly always 
found in the same veins. 

CHRYSOCOLLA. 

This is the silicate of copper, and its descriptive list is as 
follows: 


Gravity. 2.2 

Hardness.3.0 

Copper Oxide.45 p. ct. 


Silica...34 p. ct. 

Water.,.21 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous to earthy; clearness, translucent; color, 
green-blue; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle to sectile; 
cleavage, indistinct; fracture, conchoidal; texture, massive 
to earthy. 

This is one of the minor ores of copper, but yet, as it is 
frequently found filling up good-sized seams and fissures in 
and about the main veins, it is of some importance. It looks 
very much like a bright greenish earth, and its gravity is so 
little that it is apt to be classed as non-metallic and disre¬ 
garded by the non-expert. 

There are still other ores of copper, but they are unim¬ 
portant as sources of copper, and will be described under 
other heads when good for anything. The green and blue 
carbonates will bespoken of as malachite among Ornamental 
Stones. 












COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


121 


One thing about copper ores worth remembering is 
they are always bright in their coloring, and another thing 
is that you can always cut them with an ordinary penknife 
unless the lump contains a considerable amount of iron 
pyrites, which resist the knife. 

Copper is coming into new uses every day, and the 
electrical men have to have so much of it that Westing- 
house and others are buying up the big mines so as to insure 
themselves full supplies in case any more French copper 
syndicates disturb the market and make the metal scarce. 


TIN. 


This metal is not an American product to any great extent, 
but we include some points about it, as it is likely that 
deposits of it may be discovered thereby. Nearly all the tin 
used in the world comes from Malacca, Banca, Tasmania, 
Australia, and Cornwall. Some tin is found in Mexico, and 
is irregularly worked, and some is found in California, Mis¬ 
souri, and a few other localities in the United States, but it 
is nowhere mined within American jurisdiction, and we 
have to import all our tin and pay twenty to twenty-four 
cents per pound ror it. Tin is never found in nature in the 
metallic state, but we give its features, as follows: 


Gravity.7.3 

Hardness...3.0 


Tin 


100 


Lustre, bright metallic; clearness, opaque; color, silvery- 
white ; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, malleable; cleavage> 
none; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, crystalline. 

The crystalline texture of tin is such that it gives out a 
crackling sound when being bent. 


TINSTONE. 

This is cassiterite, and its points are as follows: 

Gravity.6.5 to 7.0 I Tin.*.78 p. cfc. 

Hardness...6.5 to 7.0 | Oxygen.33 p. ct. 











122 


COPPER AND TIN ORES. 


Lustre, vitreous to adamantine; clearness, translucent to 
opaque; color, brown to black generally, but gray, red, 
yellow at times; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
none; fracture, uneven; texture, massive. 

This is the great ore of tin, and from it is smelted about 
all the tin we have in use. There are considerable differ¬ 
ences in appearance and structure among varieties of tin¬ 
stone, and brilliancy of lustre sometimes gives way to a 
woody structure and appearance. This variety looks just 
like petrified wood, but it is not cleavable. This stone is 
found in regular fissure veins in all the primary rocks, and 
it is the only valuable metallic ore that seems to find a con¬ 
genial home between vein walls of granite. Other metals 
only get into veins in granite when they can’t help it. There 
are tin mines in the lower Silurian rocks in Australia, and 
very productive ones they are. 

Stream Tin is tinstone after it has been washed down out 
of the vein-stone and deposited in the beds of streams along 
with sand and gravel. It is collected by washing, same as 
stream gold. 

STANNITE. 

This is sulphide of tin, containing only twenty-six per 
cent, of tin, and is not a plentiful or valuable ore. It is 
usually associated with pyrites of iron and copper, and the 
miners call it “bell metal” on account of its appearance 
and sonorousness. It is worked more for its copper than for 
its tin. 

Notwithstanding the discoveries of tin ores in the Black 
Hills in Wyoming, King’s Mountain in South and North 
Carolina, and at Vesuvius in Virginia, we have yet no pro¬ 
ductive tin mine of America. 


VII. 

LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


Lead —Galena, Carbonate, Phosgenite, Leadhillitb 
Sartorite. Zinc — Zinc Blende, Calamine 
Smithsonite, Zincite, Gahnite. 


LEAD. 


This metal is very plentiful, and rarely sells for more than 
four and a half cents per pound in pigs; but refined sells 
for one-fourth more. The points of lead are as follows: 


Gravity.11.4 

Hardness, about. 1.5 


Lead .100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic, dull; clearness, opaque; color, leaden- 
gray ; feel, smooth; elasticity, sectile, flexible; fracture, un¬ 
even ; cleavage, none; texture, massive. 

As the fables go, lead has been found native in obscure 
localities, and specimens of it exist in mineral cabinets, but 
it is not met with in real life, except as derived from its ores. 
These ores are many and various, but a vast number of 
them are very rare, and don’t amount to enough to waste 
time on. They are alwavs found accompanying the follow¬ 
ing named principal ores, and so will not be lost or over¬ 
looked by the miner: 

GALENA. 

This is the great ore of lead. It is the sulphide of lead, 
and is found all over the world. Its descriptive list is as 
follows: 








124 


LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


Gravity.7.5 Lead...87 p. ct. 

Hardness .2.6 Sulphur.13 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic ; clearness, opaque; color, leaden-gray; 
feel, smooth to harsh: elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, even, to sub-conchoidal; texture, granular 
mostly, but also foliated, tabular, fibrous. 

The grains of pure galena are nearly always cubical or 
tabular, but when these grains are rounded on the corners 
and very small, the ore is almost sure to contain some silver. 
Such great silver mines as the Eureka, the Richmond and 
the Albion are merely veins of galena carrying silver enough 
to pay costs and heavy profits, leaving the lead to come into 
market as an extra, which weighs upon the spirits of the 
Missouri lead miners. The Utah silver mines are also 
really lead mines, and their biggest profit, in many cases, 
comes from the lead. 

The galena mines of Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois 
are beds and veins in the magnesian limestones of those 
States. Some are in Silurian and some in Carboniferous 
groups, and the lead and zinc ores are found intercalated 
with each other, and, curiously enough, these beds will sud¬ 
denly disappear at one level on top of a particular bed of 
rock and be found again beneath the bottom of the same bed. 

There are in Southwest Virginia many very large beds of 
lead and zinc ores among the Silurian and Devonian lime¬ 
stones, and also many true veins. This is also true of the 
entire western slope of the Appalachians all the way down 
through West Carolina, East Tennessee into North Georgia, 
and Alabama to the Coosa River. 

CARBONATE. 

The proper name of this ore is Cermsite , but as the Lead- 
villians have got the great majority of all that is known to 
exist, and they insist on calling it carbonate, the rest of us 
will save trouble by calling it carbonate also. Its points are: 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 


6.4 

3.3 


Lead Oxide... 
Carbonic Acid 


83 p. ct. 
17 p. ct. 










LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


125 


Lustre, vitreous to iesinous ; clearness, translucent; color, 
light to dark-gray; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
not always perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, massive 
to granular. 

This and the ore phosgenite, next spoken of, are, with 
iron carbonates, the great ores of Leadville. There they 
are indiscriminately called “ carbonates,” and the silver is 
found in the shape of chloride mixed in with them. Cerus- 
site and phosgenite, when in powder and demoralized 
generally, look like so much clay or earth, and can only be 
distinguished by their extra weight or by actual test. It is 
probable that rich carbonates are daily walked over in 
many places in the Eastern States without exciting sus¬ 
picion. 

PHOSGENITE. 

This is another lead carbonate, and its points are: 

Gravity.6.2 Lead Carbonate.49 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.9 Lead Chloride.51 p. ct. 

Lustre, adamantine metallic ; clearness, transparent; color, 
gray to yellowish-white ; feel, smooth ; elasticity, brittle to 
sectile; cleavage, perfect; fracture, even; texture, crystal¬ 
line, tabular. 

The chlorine in this ore evidently has some connection 
with the chlorine in the silver ores at Leadville, and it is 
generally held now that both the carbonates and chlorides 
of lead and silver are resultants from the decomposition of 
galena and silver sulphides previously existing. The 
reader is referred to remarks on the formation of veins in 
the chapter on Bed Rocks for further suggestions on 
these decompositions. 

Other lead [ores are the following, but, as they are unim¬ 
portant and only found in connection with sulphides or car¬ 
bonates, they will not be described in great detail: 

Anglesite is a sulphate of lead resulting from changes in 
sulphides. 

LeadMUite is a sulphate and carbonate of lead resulting 
from sulphides. 







126 


LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


Clausthalite is selenide of lead. 

Zinkenite is sulphide of lead and antimony, and is more of 
an antimony ore than a lead ore. 

Sartorite is sulphide of lead and arsenic. 

Boulangerite is similar to zinkenite, being a sulphide of 
lead and antimony. 

Bournonite is sulphide of lead, antimony and copper. 

Pyromorphite is lead oxide with chlorine and phosphorus. 

Mimetite is lead oxide with chlorine and arsenic. 

Vanadite is lead oxide with chlorine and vanadium. 

These wildcat ores are all good cabinet specimens, but 
none are abundant enough to be looked for as lead ores. 

REMARKS. 

Electricity is increasing the demand for lead greatly, as it 
is found that the lead plate for storage batteries and the lead 
piping for underground cables are the best. 

ZINC. 

This metal is not found native, but has to be extracted 
from its ores. Its points are : 


Gravity.7.2 

Hardness.1.5 to 2.0 


Zinc 


100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, white; feel, 
harsh; elasticity, flexible, sectile; cleavage, imperfect; frac¬ 
ture, uneven; texture, massive. 

Crude zinc, in the shape of spelter, sells at five and a half 
to six cents per pound, and refined sheet zinc at seven to 
seven and a half cents. There are five ores of zinc, as fol¬ 
lows: 


ZINC BLENDE. 

This is the sulphide of zinc, called Sphalerite in laboratory 
and Black Jack in the mine. Its descriptive list is as follows: 


Gravity.4.1 Zinc.67 p. ct. 

Hardees..., 3,7 Sulphur... 33 p. ct. 












LEAD AND ZINC ORES 


127 


Lustre, resinous; clearness, translucent; color, whitish- 
yellow to brown; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

Its color can be red or green or bluish, according to the 
character of impurities present. Iron is often present and 
colors the mineral dark brown to black. This ore looks 
much like a bundle of little balls of resin agglutinated by a 
cement of the same resin. 

Although black jack is the bottom ore from which all 
other zinc ores have developed, it is the smallest actual pro¬ 
ducer of the two or three principal ores, and is the most 
subject to malediction of all ores. It is very refractory in 
the furnace, and makes refractory all ores of other metals 
that it may be mixed with. The silver men especially are 
worried by it, and its presence in the silver mines in many 
Western localities is the bottom reason for non-payment of 
dividends by many smelting companies. 

Black jack is found in nearly all the mines in Southwest 
Virginia and on down the Appalachian range into Alabama, 
and a good deal of zinc and white zinc for paint is made 
from it. It is also found in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 
and in the lead districts of Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois 
it is found with the lead. 

CALAMINE. 

This is the silicate of zinc, and is the great producing ore. 
Its description is as follows: 

Gravity.3.0 to 3.7 Silica.35 p. ct. 

JIardness.4.6 tp 5.0 Water.8 p. ct. 

Zinc Oxide.67 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel; harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

Calamine can present many very different appearances. 
The pure crystalline variety is simply a block of clear crys¬ 
tal, but when this has been treated to a little washing and 
gtirring in water and allowed to settle and get dry it looks 









128 


LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


much like whitish-clay or shale. When it has sand and 
other impurities in it its color is correspondingly changed, 
and few inexpert people would take it to be metallic ore. 
To further complicate matters, there is another ore called 
WiUemite, which is also a silicate of zinc, but contains no 
water, and the two are nearly always found together. They 
both are resultants of the decomposition of black jack. 
Calamine and the carbonate ore next spoken of are the main 
sources of supply for zinc 

SMITHSONITE 

This is the carbonate of zinc, and its descriptive list is as 
follows: 

Gravity.4.0 to 4.4 Zinc Oxide.65 p. ct. 

Hardness.4.6 to 5.0 Carbonic Acid.35 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, gray-white; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This ore, like calamine, is often found in the earthy con¬ 
dition, looking more like yellowish-clay than an ore. The 
miners call both these ores, when in this condition, tallow 
clay , and certain other conditions induce them to call them 
both dry bone. 

The silicate and carbonate ores are nearly always found 
together in veins or beds in the lower groups of the second¬ 
ary formation, and they are found in the greatest abundance 
and perfection in the lead mines of Missouri. Like the 
silicate ores, which go in a pair, one hydrous and the other 
anhydrous, the carbonates are also two in number, one 
watered, the other dry. Hydrozincite is the wet carbonate, 
and contains eleven per cent, of water. It accompanies 
smithsonite, but is unimportant. 

ZINCITE. 

This is the zinc oxide which appears among the constitu¬ 
ents of the silicates and carbonates. Its description is as 
follows; 







LEAD AND ZINC ORES. 


129 


Gravity.5.5 Zinc.80 p. ct. 

Hardness.4.3 OxygCn.30 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, red to 
orange; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular, foliated. 

This is called red zinc ore , but it is very rare, and is useful 
chiefly as an ingredient in the other ores. 

GAHNITE. 

This is zinc spinel or aluminate of zinc, and, so far as 
known, it is a very rare ore, but as it may be plentiful, 
though overlooked, we will describe it: 


Gravity.4.3 

Hardness.7.7 


Zinc Oxide.39 p. ct. 

Alumina.61 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
green, yellowish or bluish; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, 
crystalline. 

REMARKS. 

Here, again, electricity comes in to use up zinc in primary 
batteries, and as a diamagnetic coating for paramagnetic iron 
discs for armature cores, to prevent loss and heating by local 
currents. 












VIII. 

NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


Nickel—Pyrrhtite, Millerite, Nickelite, Glance. 
Cobalt—Smaltite, Cobaltite, Cobalt Pyrite, 
Cobalt Bloom. Chrome — Chromite. 


NICKEL. 


This metal is not found in the metallic form in nature, 
except as a constituent in meteors along with metallic iron. 
Its points are : 


Gravity.8.2 

Hardness.2.5 


Nickel.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, bright metallic; clearness, opaque; color, silver- 
white ; feel, smooth; elasticity, flexible; cleavage, none; 
fracture, hackly; texture, massive. 

Nickel is very malleable and ductile, is brilliant and 
showy, and does not tarnish at ordinary temperatures. It 
is, therefore, used for cheap coins, spoons, table-ware, and 
for nickel-plating harness buckles, copper watch cases, and 
all sorts of sham work. There is no open market for nickel, 
as its production is monopolized by a few men who keep 
their own counsel. 

PYRRHOTITE. 

This is the same Magnetic Pyrites which was mentioned as 
an iron ore and of not much account as such, but it is the 








NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


131 


ore from which all our nickel comes, so we will describe it 
again, with an average percentage of nickel in it: 


Gravity.4.5 

Hardness.3.8 

Iron.55 p. ct. 


Nickel. 5 p. ct. 

Sulphur.40 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, yellow to 
pinkish-yellow; feel, smoothish; elasticity, brittle; cleav¬ 
age, perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This ore is a little lighter in color and a little softer than 
the non-nickeliferous pyrrhotite, but it seems to be fully as 
magnetic. The percentage of nickel is very various, 
ranging up to twelve per cent, in rare cases. This is the 
great ore of the Lancaster Gap mines of Pennsylvania, 
from which nearly all our nickel supply comes. 


MILLERITE. 

This is Nickel Pyrite or Sulphide of Nickel, and it is thought 
by some that this ore and the ordinary iron pyrrhotite are 
mixed mechanically and make up the nickeliferous pyrrho¬ 
tite. However that may be, the description of millerite is 
as follows: 


Gravity.5.0 

Hardness.3.3 


Nickel.64 p. ct. 

Sulphur. 36 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, yellow to 
bronze; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, fibrous, columnar. 

This ore is very rich, but it is so scarce as not to amount 
to much by itself. 

NICKELITE. 

This is also called copper nickel, from its color, althougn 
there is no copper in it. Its points are : 


.7.4 

.5.3 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 


Nickel.. 

Arsenic 


44 p. ct. 
.56 p. ct. 


















132 


NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, red to grayish- 
red; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; 
fracture, uneven ; texture, massive. 

This ore resembles the bornite purple ore of copper, but 
differs as follows: It is a lighter red in color, is one-half 
heavier, and two-thirds harder than bornite. There are 
varieties of this ore in which antimony is present in iarge 
percentage. This ore also is a rare one, but valuable when 
found. 

GLANCE. 

This appears to be nearly the same thing as nickelite, with 
some sulphur intermixed. Its points are : 

Gravity.6.0 Arsenic.45 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.5 Sulphur.30 p. ct. 

Nickel.35 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque ; color, white to gray; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, cubic, granular, tabular. 

There is also a variety of this ore which contains anti¬ 
mony in large percentage, also ruthenium and other rare 
minerals, but the whole family are hard to find. 

Other still more scarce minerals containing nickel are 
the following: Nickel Bloom contains nickel oxide, arsenic 
oxide and water. Nickel Emerald contains nickel oxide, 
carbonic acid and water. OentMte contains nickel oxide, 
silica, water, magnesia, lime, and is a “job lot” generally. 
Orunanile contains copper, cobalt, nickel, iron, bismuth 
and sulphur. Ordinary Iron Pyrite also often contains a 
pinch of nickel big enough to be worth looking after, but, 
as it don’t alter the regular descriptive list, it is hard to 
recognize without a ten dollar analysis. 

REMARKS. 

Nickel is used for coinage purposes by our government, 
and it is also the great plating metal next to. silver. There 
is now coming in a new steel, called ferro-nickel, which is 
claimed to have valuable qualities. 








NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


133 


COBALT. 

This metal, like chrome, is rarely used in the metallic state, 
dut its ores furnish us the materials for many of our finest 
colors, especially those for coloring glass. The beautiful 
blue smalt is a cobalt color. The following are the ores: 


SMALTITE. 


This is arsenical cobalt, and its points are: 


Gravity.. 

Hardness 

Arsenic.. 


6.5 to 7.0 
,5.5 to 6.0 
.70 p. ct. 


Cobalt 

Nickel, 

Iron... 


14 p. ct. 
6 p. ct. 
,10 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, grayish-white; 
feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle ; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, 
uneven; texture, granular. 


COBALTITE. 

This is cobalt glance, and its points are as follows: 

Gravity....6.2 Cobalt.........35 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.5 Sulphur. .20 p. ct. 

Arsenic.45 p. ct 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, white to red¬ 
dish-gray ; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular to crystalline. 


COBALT PYRITE. 

This is cobalt sulphide, and its points are as follows: 

Gravity.5.0 Cobalt.58 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.6 Sulphur.42 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, gray to red¬ 
dish-gray; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect ; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, fine, or coarse. 

In this particular ore the cobalt is more liable to replace¬ 
ment, in whole or in part, by nickel than in any other ore. 




















134 


NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


COBALT BLOOM. 

This is the ore containing oxidized cohalt, and its descrip¬ 
tive list is as follows : 

Gravity.3.0 I Cobalt Oxide.38 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.0 i Water.24 p. ct. 

Arsenic Oxide.38 p. ct. | 

Lustre, pearly to vitreous to dull; clearness, transparent 
down to sub-translucent; color, crimson-red, bluish to green¬ 
ish; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle to flexible; 
cleavage, perfect; fracture, mixed even to uneven; texture, 
foliated, columnar to earthy. 

It will be seen that this cobalt oxide is entirely different 
in appearance and physical characteristics from any of the 
others. Fine pieces of it form very valuable cabinet speci¬ 
mens. 

Cobalt bloom, smaltite and cobalt glance are the ores 
from which smalt is most usually made. The peculiarity of 
the cobalt colors is that they stand fire so well, and for porce¬ 
lain painting, pottery decoration and glass staining they 
are almost always used. 

Cobalt ores never occur in veins or deposits of their own, 
but they are always found in veins of other metals, such as 
nickel, copper, and others. These other metals, indeed, fre¬ 
quently replace part of the cobalt in its own ores, so that 
pure cobalt ore is very rare. 


CHROME. 

Chromium is the proper name of this metal, while chrome 
is its ordinary name; but as we are writing for the benefit of 
the unscientific we will note the fact and go ahead. Chrome 
is not found naturally in the metallic state, but is entirely 
derived from its ores. As a metal, it is only used in alloy 
with iron, making chrome steel for use as a tool steel. It is 
claimed to be superior to carbon steel for this purpose. It 
has also been tried for bridge steel, but not successfully. 








NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME, 


135 


CHROMITE. 

This is the ore from which all chrome is derived. Its 
descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.4.4 I Iron Protoxide.32 p. ct. 

Hardness. .5.5 | Chrome Sesquioxide, 68 p. ct. 

Lustre, sub-metallic; clearness, opaque; color, steel-gray 
to brownish-black; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, massive to granular. 

The chromite from some deposits looks very like a mass 
of small duck-shot agglomerated with yellowisli-white 
cement. Other ore will be of the same analysis, and yet 
look like the finest-grained magnetic iron ore. These ores 
are found mostly among the serpentine dykes, and are some¬ 
times in veins, sometimes in pockets, and often distributed 
through the body of serpentine rocks. The writer has seen 
beds of sand in which one-half the weight was made up of 
chromite, this ore having evidently been derived by washing 
down the substance of neighboring hills. 

The uses of chrome are almost entirely connected with 
the dyeing of fabrics and the making of paints, and for 
these purposes the ore is acted on directly, without reducing 
it to the metallic form. Chromate of potash is the brownish- 
yellow base first produced from the ore, and from this base 
the bichromates and all the other greens, yellows, blues, 
browns and reds are produced. The whole business in 
Europe is in the hands of a Scotch family, and that in 
America is owned by a Baltimore family, and these two 
families are in agreement. Many times have new men built 
expensive works and put new products on the market, but 
the old manufacturers simply put down prices all over the 
world, until the new product disappeared from the market. 
This means the bankruptcy of the new men. 

Chrome ore is very apt to have impurities mixed with it, 
and as its analysis is one of the very difficult ones, its true 
value is generally known only to the buying agents of these 





136 


NICKEL, COBALT AND CHROME. 


skilled manufacturers. It is also to be remembered that 
these men constitute the only market for chrome ore, so that 
mine owners are really at their mercy. The writer has 
known of sales of ore containing sixty per cent, chromic 
sesquioxide at forty-two dollars per ton in Baltimore. 

Chrome in iron makes chrome steel, much used for cutting 
tools, but its brittleness and uncertainty are defects. 


IX. 

ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 


Antimony — Antimony Glance. Mercury — Amalgam, 
Cinnabar. Platinum. Aluminum. Uranium. 


ANTIMONY. 


Antimony comes first alphabetically, but not otherwise. 
It is too brittle to be of much use alone, but it is very valua¬ 
ble in alloys. Journal boxes, type metal, Britannia ware, 
and innumerable other things contain this metal as a harden¬ 
ing principle. Its description is : 


Gravity.6.7 

Hardness.4.0 


Antimony.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color white, slightly 
bluish; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular. 

Antimony sells at from twelve to twenty-five cents per 
pound, according to purity and state of market. It is only 
found native in alloy, never alone, and is nearly all obtained 
from its ores. The peculiar star-like grain or crystalline 
texture of this metal is enough to furnish its means of 
identification. It can be easily hammered into powder, being 
very brittle when pure. It tarnishes very slightly at ordi¬ 
nary temperatures, but when only moderately heated in the 
open air it oxidizes so rapidly as to give off fumes and 
flames. 








138 ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 


ANTIMONY GLANCE. 

This is the great ore of antimony, the others being merely 
sufficient in quantity to afford cabinet specimens. It is vari¬ 
ously called Gray Antimony , Antimonite , and Stibnite , this 
last being from the former name of the metal, Stibium , which 
is abbreviated into Sb and used as the symbol. The descrip¬ 
tion of this ore is as follows: 

Gravity.4.5 Antimony.72 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.0 Sulphur...28 p. ct. 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, gray; feel, 
smooth and harsh; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular to massive. 

This ore tarnishes rapidly, getting black in spots, and 
sometimes shows a peacock iridescence like bituminous 
coal. It is very easily melted, and dissolves in hydrochloric 
acid. It rarely occurs in deposits by itself, its usual com¬ 
panion being the iron carbonates, the zinc, lead and other 
ores, and the barytic sulphates and carbonates. In Califor¬ 
nia some large veins of mixed ores are found in the foothills 
of the southern counties, and a considerable supply of anti¬ 
mony is now coming from there. North Carolina is also 
producing some antimony. This ore sometimes occurs in 
fibrous texture, looking like bunches of needles, 

Antimony is of very great use in the arts to mix with 
other metals and make such alloys as Babbitt metal, 

MERCURY. 

Mercury,-often called quicksilver, occurs native as little 
drops and globules among its ores or the rocks containing 
them. Its description is as follows; 

Gravity...13.8 I Mercury.100 p. ct. 

Hardness.Liquid. 

Lustre, bright metallic; clearness, opaque; color, silver 
white; feel, greasy; elasticity, cleavage, fracture, all inde¬ 
scribable ; texture, liquid, 











ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 139 

Mercury is put up in iron flasks, and sells at about forty 
cents per pound, but the price varies considerably, as there 
are but few great sources of supply, and their owners some¬ 
times combine to put up their prices. Then they sell all 
they can for present and future delivery (especially future), 
get up a quarrel, abuse each other in the papers and drop 
prices to shake out all the mercury they delivered as “ spot.” 
They buy this back from its despairing owners at low 
prices, and deliver it to fill their contracts for futures. 

AMALGAM. 

This is mercury which has absorbed silver or other metal, 
and its descriptive list is as follows: 


Gravity.14.0 

Hardness.3.3 


Mercury.73 p. ct. 

Silver. .27 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, silver white; 
feel, greasy; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, none to 
speak of; texture, granular; fracture, uneven. 

This metal varies very greatly in its composition, for it is 
simply a mixture of molecules and not a chemical compound 
of atoms. Sometimes gold is found instead of silver, and 
sometimes gold, silver, copper and other amalgamable metals 
all together. It is found among tbe precious metal-mining 
districts, and although very valuable it is not abundant, 

CINNABAR. 

This is the great ore of mercury, and its points are: 


Gravity....... 9.0 

Hardness.2.2 


Mercury...86 p. ct. 

Sulphur.14 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque to translucent; color, 
scarlet-red; feel, harsh; elasticity, sectile ; eleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular, crystalline 
Nearly all mercury comes from this ore, and it is found 
in beds and veins in the primary and secondary formations 
It is most abundant among the softer rocks, such as shales, 
slates, limestones, etc., and least abundant among the 












140 ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 


harder granites, porphyries, etc. Sometimes it is found 
permeating the rocks adjoining the veins or becls, and it is 
fond of companionship with volcanic and sulphurous rocks 
and beds. 

Calomel is mercury chloride, containing eighty-five per 
cent, of mercury; and Hydrargyrite is mercury oxide, con¬ 
taining ninety-two per cent. These two ores accompany 
cinnabar, but are unimportant. 


PLATINUM. 

This metal is only found in the metallic condition, some¬ 
times alloyed with other native metals, such as iridium or 
osmium, but never in chemical combination with other 
substances which could make an ore out of it. 

Gravity.16.0 to 33.0 I Platinum.100 p. ct. 

Hardness. 4.0 to 4.5 | 

Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, whitish-gray; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, ductile, elastic; cleavage, none; 
fracture, hackly; texture, small, granular. 

The specific gravity of platinum is a little mixed, but the 
trouble seems to be that when in a native state, weighing 
only sixteen, it is porous, but the pores are so small as to 
prevent the ingress of water. When it is melted and 
thoroughly hammered or rolled or drawn, these pores are 
all closed, and it is so condensed as to weigh twenty-two. 

This metal does not dissolve in the acids of usual strength, 
but when mixed with ten per cent, of silver, nitric acid will 
dissolve the whole. Platinum is so nearly infusible that it 
is used by the electricians to concentrate great amounts of 
electricity in, and when thus charged it becomes incandescent 
without burning. 

Platinum is found in grains and dust in the beds of 
streams, just as gold is found, and in the same regions, too. 
Nuggets of ten to fifteen pounds have been found in Brazil 
and in Siberia. Serpentine rocks and chrome ores are near 
neighbors of platinum, but it has not yet been found in veins. 






ANTIMONY, MERCURY, PLATINUM, &c. 141 


ALUMINUM. 

Aluminium, or aluminum, as we hasty Americans now call 
it, is the metallic basis of the aluminous portions of all clays 
and other such minerals. It is a white metal with a weak 
bluish tinge, and has a specific gravity of only 2.6, thus weigh¬ 
ing about as much as common rocks. The metal has until 
recently been more of a curiosity than of any practical use, 
but its production has now passed out of the hands of the 
professional chemists, who have no time to waste in making 
money, into those of the manufacturing chemists, who have 
time for such things, and we are now finding the new metal 
applied to all sorts of uses, and its price is constantly being 
cheapened. As showing its greatly reduced price, see the 
advertisement below: 

ALUMINUM, $2 PER POUND. 

The Pittsburg Reduction Company, 95 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburg, Pa., 
U. S. A., offers commercially pure Aluminum at the following rates at 
Pittsburg, Pa.: 

Lots of 1,000 lbs. and over.$2.00 per lb. 

Lots of 500 lbs. and over.$2.25 per lb. 

Lots of 100 lbs. and over. $2.50 per lb. 

Metal guaranteed to be equal in quality to the best metal manufac¬ 
tured by any other process. 

And this is not the end of it, either, for there are now sev¬ 
eral companies in this country making it, and new ones 
organizing, based on new processes and patents. 


URANIUM. 

This is a greenish-yellow metal, very heavy, and has here¬ 
tofore been selling at five to ten dollars per pound, but a 
heavy vein of an undescribed ore containing it has recently 
been found in Cornwall, and we may soon see more of it, 
especially for use by the counterfeiters, for its alloys greatly 
resemble good gold. 






GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


Agate—Alabaster—Amber—Amethyst—Aquamarine— 
Carnelian—Chrysoberyl—Chrysoprase—Diamond— 
Emerald—Garnet—Hyacinth—Jasper—Lazulite— 
Meerschaum—Onyx—Opal—Ruby—Sapphire—Topaz- 
Tourmaline—Turquoise—Ultramarine—Jade. 


AGATE. 


This mineral comes first alphabetically, and it is one of 
the many forms in which silica or quartz occurs. In all 
civilized countries it is accounted precious, and is cut into 
gems. Its beauty is much greater than is expressed in the 
following technical descriptive list: 


Gravity.2.6 

Hardness.7.0 


Silica.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent to transparent; 
color, of all kinds; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
indistinct; fracture, uneven; texture, massive, crystalline. 

Agates* are built up in nodules, layer upon layer, like the 
skins of an onion, and in some other cases they look like 
fibrous "wood. Others contain stains of manganese or iron, 
disposed'in moss-like figures and veins, arranged so as to 
furnish close resemblances to persons and things, which 
are easily recognized, and these agates command excessive 
prices. Sometimes the concentric layers in the nodules 








GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


143 


will be so thin as to be mere films, and hundreds of them 
occur within the thickness of an inch, while each delicate 
line can be traced clear around the ball. Agates are care¬ 
fully cut into finished gems and highly prized in Europe 
and Asia, but in America no cutters have as yet established 
themselves, although our rough agates are of the greatest 
known variety and beauty. 

Agates are found, like other quartz pebbles, along water¬ 
courses and beaches, but they are generally confined to 
eruptive or the older primary regions. The great amygda¬ 
loid trap rock of the Lake Superior country contains great 
quantities of agates as amygdules, and as the mother rock 
disintegrates and washes away, the agates get loose also 
and find their way down to the stream beds. The same is 
true of the trap-rock regions of the Rocky mountains, but 
the trap rocks east of the Appalachian mountains contain 
very few agates. 

The reader is warned that the most beautiful agate, when 
in a state of nature, looks just like any ordinary water- 
rolled pebble, and even when roughly broken it shows only 
indistinctly its peculiar structure. It should never be 
broken, but should be ground into a small facet on one side, 
when its \ tructure will discover itself. It is very hard, but 
can be ground slightly on a smooth quartz stone by hard 
rubbing. A little oil and some hard, sharp sand will assist 
the grinding, and the oil will also help in developing the 
colors quickly. 

ALABASTER. 

The value of this stone was much greater in ancient 
times than now. It is used as a material to carve into all 
sorts of ornamental work for indoor use. It does not stand 
exposure, and its polish gives way very rapidly before the 
impure air of our modern dwellings. We keep the smaller 
carvings of this stone under glass covers nowadays, and 
we are superseding it with artificial compounds of more 
real value and fully as great beauty. In former times there 
were two alabasters, one hard and one soft, but the soft 



144 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


species is now the only one known properly by that name. 
They were both calcareous, the hard being calcite or 
calcium carbonate, and will be described with one of the 
marbles. The soft or true alabaster is calcium sulphate, 
and its points are as follows: 


Gravity.2.3 

Hardness.1.5 

Lime .33 p. ct. 


Sulphur trioxide (acid), 46 p. ct. 
Water.21 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly, sub-vitreous; clearness, opaque to sub- 
translucent ; color, white to delicate pink, yellow or bluish; 
feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect ; fracture, uneven; texture, massive, granular. 

When thread-like veins of blue or other colors are found 
in delicate tracery in alabaster the value is increased. This 
stone is one of the gypsums, and is found in beds in the 
secondary formation, and in pockets and veins in the pri¬ 
mary rocks. There is also a tertiary species of little use. 

AMBER. 

When you put the amber mouth-piece of your meer¬ 
schaum pipe between your lips you are tasting some hydro¬ 
carbon, but it is not in the same condition as coal tar or corn 
whiskey; but there is very little difference between the carbon 
of the amber and that of its counterfeit, celluloid. The 
descriptive list of amber is as follows: 


Gravity.1.0 to 1.1 

Hardness.2.0 to 2.4 

Carbon.79 p. ct. 


Hydrogen.10.5 p. ct. 

Oxygen.10.5 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous; clearness, translucent to transparent: 
color, yellow, inclining sometimes to red or white; feel, 
smooth; elasticity, sectile, flexible, elastic; cleavage, none; 
fracture, uneven; texture, massive, crystalline; tasteless. 

Amber is simply a peculiar variety of resin or gum (some¬ 
what similar to the gums used by Yankee school girls for 
chewing) which has been buried so long as to have become 
mineralized. It often contains insects which got themselves 













GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


145 


all stuck up in it while it was still soft, and have floundered 
around so much that sometimes the wings and bodies are 
found well separated from each other. 

Amber is to be looked for in any of the lignite beds, and 
also where any fossilized timber is found deep under ground. 

Jet is often found with amber, and appears to be the knots 
of the trees from which the amber gum exuded during the 
life of the tree. 

AMETHYST. 


This is one of the quartz stones, but differs from agate in 
many respects, principally as follows : 


Gravity.2.6 

Hardness.7.0 


Silica.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous to adamantine; clearness, transparent; 
color, purple, violet; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
very indistinct; fracture, uneven; texture, massive. 

This crystal comes in six-sided prisms, which generally 
run to a point at one end, and grow out of a piece of silicious 
rock at the other. A cluster of amethysts taken out of one 
“digging” will generally contain crystals of blue, green, 
yellow, red, gray, and white colors, and these are all called 
amethysts commonly, although those of purple or violet only 
are truly entitled to that name. The red crystals are prop¬ 
erly called “rose quartz,” the clouded ones are “smoky 
quartz,” and the green ones are “ prase.” The yellow stones 
are spoken of as false topaz. 

The perfectly clear, colorless, limpid crystals are properly 
called “ rock crystals ,” but the ladies have taken them up and 
made them fashionable under the name of Alaska diamonds , 
and the jewelers are making whole oodles of money out of 
the fancy. The finest rock crystals in this country are 
found on Diamond Mountain, near the Arkansas Hot 
Springs, where they are found in immense number and 
variety, and of the most ornamental and suggestive forms. 
That whole country is silicious and the waters are charged 
with silica. 






140 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


AQUAMARINE. 

This is a lovely stone, and its kinship with the emerald 
places it in the front rank. This and the emerald are the 
only two valuable varieties of the Beryl , the emerald being 
the green, and the aquamarine the bluish beryl. The de¬ 
scriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.2.7 

Hardness.7.7 

Silica.67 p. ct. 

Lustre, adamantine to vitreous; clearness, transparent; 
color, greenish-blue; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle, but 
tough; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, 
granular. 

Aquamarines are the perfectly transparent varieties of 
beryls, the emerald being translucent, and the big, coarse 
beryl itself being opaque to sub-translucent. There are 
some yellowish and some whitish varieties which are nearly 
transparent, but they don’t rank with the brilliant-colored 
blue and green stones as gems. 

There is a tendency in aquamarines towards a double 
refraction power somewhat similar to that possessed by dia¬ 
monds, but of greatly inferior degree. Aquamarines are 
very hard, as seen by the point given in the description, and 
they will cut all the amethysts, but will not cut topaz, and 
are not acted on by acids. Aquamarines are found scattered 
in slate rocks, mostly the clay slates of the primary forma¬ 
tions. 

CARNELIAN. 

This is what all the beads are made out of, and it is a mem¬ 
ber of the chalcedonic branch of the quartz family. Its 
points are: 

Gravity.2.6 I Silica.100 p. ct. 

Hardness...'7.0 

Lustre, vitreous to resinous; clearness, transparent to 
translucent; color, various shades of red or flesh color; 


Alumina.19 p. ct. 

Beryllia (Glucina).14 p. ct. 











GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


147 


feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, none; fracture, 
uneven to conchoidal; texture, massive, crystalline. 

The chalcedonic condition of quartz is a very peculiar 
one, and has some resemblance to clear wax or resin. There 
may be large blocks of it, all of massive texture, and with¬ 
out a sign of a cleavage line or surface in it. FI int and horn- 
stone are chalcedonies of the more opaque varieties. 

Carnelian colors are not the same in Nature as they are in 
beads, as the stones out of which the beads are made are first 
subjected to several days’ roasting and some oiling, all of 
which heightens their tints very greatly. 

The operation of making beads is, first, smashing the rock, 
then rounding each piece by the abrasion produced by roll¬ 
ing half a ton of these fragments in a rolling barrel, then 
separating them into their several sizes by means of screens, 
then drilling the holes, then rolling them in smaller barrels 
to put a polish on them, then boxing up the assorted sizes 
for sale. 

CHRYSOBERYL. 

This is one of the aluminous crystals, but is not ranked as 
high as the sapphires, rubies, and others. Its descriptive list 
is as follows: 

Gravity.3.7 Alumina.80 p. ct. 

Hardness.8.5 Glucina (Beryllia).20 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, transparent to translucent; 
color, green, in many shades; feel, smooth ; elasticity brittle; 
cleavage, distinct; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, 
crystalline. 

Chrysoberyl is rarely found containing only alumina and 
beryllia, but there is generally a percentage of both silica 
and iron, and occasionally a good many other things are 
mixed in. It is found among the chrysolite rocks along 
with corundum and the other aluminous stones, and is well 
worth having, for it is a valued gem. Its great hardness is 
its ear-mark. 







148 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


CHRYSOPRASE. 

This is another of the forms taken by chalcedonic quartz, 
and it ranks among the lower grade of gems. Its descrip¬ 
tive list is as follows : 


Gravity.2.6 

Hardness.7.0 


Silica.100 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous to resinous; clearness, transparent to 
translucent; color, apple-green; feel, smooth; elasticity, 
brittle; cleavage, none; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; 
texture, crystalline. 

This is substantially the same thing as carnelian, but 
differs in color, owing to the presence of minute amounts 
of nickel. Some stones of this variety are very beautiful 
and highly valued. 

diamond. . 

Here we have carbon again, and it is but natural that we 
should value more highly than any other snbstance this 
purest form of that greatest mineral which enters so largely 
into the life, health and comfort of all animated nature, 
and from w lose oxidation is derived all the heat, light and 
other energies which design, construct and operate all our 
railroads, steamships, engines, machinery, and everything 
else worth having in this world. The descriptive list of 
diamond is as follows: 

Gravity. 3.5 Carbon.100 p. ct. 

Hardness.10.0 Value.1,000 p. ct. 

Lustre, adamantine; clearness, transparent; color, color¬ 
less to white; feel, smooth and consoling; elasticity, tough, 
brittle; cleavage, perfect, eminent; fracture, conchoidal; 
texture, crystalline. 

Before going any further we want to state that when a 
suspected stone is found to agree with the description in 
the matters of gravity, hardness, lustre, clearness, color, 
feel and apparent texture, it should be sent to an expert at 











GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


149 


once, without attempting to apply the tests of elasticity, 
cleavage and fracture. A diamond will crack and break 
up like any other pebble, but the cracking will reduce a 
thousand-dollar diamond into worthless fragments, although 
the rural wiseacres do say that you can’t break a diamond. 

The crystal of the diamond is mostly an octahedron, 
more or less perfect or distorted. A true octahedron is 
built of two four-sided pyramids joined together, base to 
base, thus leaving eight triangular-shaped facets exposed. 
Other crystals take this form also, but the diamond is 
distinguished from all others by the feature that these facets 
are always “fulled up” and convex, never flat or concave 
or hollow. This makes the edges of the diamond crystal 
rather rounded and blunt, while all other crystals have 
sharp edges. Tf a diamond crystal has been broken, one 
part will show a hollow, fractured surface, while the other 
part will be convex, fitting into the concavity of the first 
part. 

Diamonds are mostly found imbedded in clay, sand, slate 
or shale. When found in the sands of gold washings in 
stream beds, the operation of washing them must be a much 
more delicate one than gold washing, as the difference in 
specific gravity is so much less between diamond and quartz 
than between gold and quartz. There are also many other 
pebbles than quartz pebbles, and they are often of greater 
weight than the quartz, so that the probability of losing the 
diamonds over the edge of the pan, unrecognized, is greater 
than that of losing gold. 

The Brazilian diamonds are found in a stratum of what is 
called “ cement ” in California, and which is a mass of peb¬ 
bles and fragments of pebbles of quartz, mixed with smaller 
gravels and sands, and all cemented by a red ferruginous 
clay. This forms layers and deposits on the bed rock of 
the streams, and often extends out under the bottom lands. 
In Brazil it contains diamonds, gold, platinum, and many 
other odds and ends of minerals, but in California it 
is only worked for gold, while the diamonds, if there are 
any. get away unseen. 


150 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


In South Africa diamonds are found in the stream beds 
of several rivers and their tributaries, and are also found 
embedded in a mixed-up mess of hardened calcareous clay, 
pebbles, and all sorts of minerals, which fill up great crater¬ 
like cavities in the primary slate beds of the region. The 
calcareous shale has not only its own proper dose of car¬ 
bonic acid as part of the carbonate of lime, but there is also 
a permeation or impregnation of bitumen in the shale, and 
from these sources of carbon the diamonds appear to have 
crystallized. 

In the United States a few diamonds have been found. 
Some small ones have been recognized by the gold miners 
in California, but they have been considered more in the 
light of a joke than otherwise, and given away, as they 
interfered with the regular business of gold mining, just as 
the fisherman threw away his trout, and said that “ when he 
went a catting, he went a catting.” Some few small finds of 
diamonds are also reported in Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, 
and Colorado, but so far nothing of much significance has 
come out of them. 

There is a formation of flexible sandstone or quartzite, 
which ranges from Georgia well up into North Carolina, and 
which is properly called itacolumite, and it is of the same 
nature as a stone found near the ferruginous cement of the 
Brazilian diamond field. There have been some diamonds 
found here and there along the line of this itacolumite in 
Georgia and Carolina, and there are good reasons for think¬ 
ing that proper search would develop an Appalachian dia¬ 
mond field as a little sister to the great coal field of that 
name There have also been two or three diamonds found 
on James River, near Richmond, which may have something 
to do with that vein of natural coke mentioned in the chap¬ 
ter on Coal. 

The valuation of diamonds is entirely arbitrary, and de¬ 
pends on many considerations. Among them is the purity 
or “water” of the stone. If it is perfectly limpid, like a 
drop of the purest water, it is classed as of the first water. 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


151 


Then its color comes next, and if it is colorless it ranks 
highest. The whitish stones rank next; the merest tinge or 
suspicion of green or blue rather heightens the rank of the 
white stones. The rose diamond comes next, and after that 
come the yellow or amber colors, but they must all be per¬ 
fect in “water” and flawless to rank among the first or 
royal class. The state of the market is another factor in the 
price of diamonds. If people are feeling rich and prosper¬ 
ous diamonds are in demand and bring high prices. If 
people are feeling poor and hard pressed they want no dia¬ 
monds in theirs, unless they come as testimonials of regard, 
so to speak, or some other way. 

Among diamonds only about one in ten is royal, the others 
being black, or more or less colored. These inferior stones 
are called Bort or Garbonites , and are in great demand to put 
in as cutters in diamond drills, and to make diamond dust 
for cutting and polishing. They are not to be despised on 
account of race or color, as they bring good prices for these 
uses. Anything that will cut quartz should be looked into. 

EMERALD. 

The emerald is the translucent or sub-transparent and 
green variety of the beryl, just as aquamarine is the trans¬ 
parent and blue variety, but the emerald is very much more 
highly prized than the aquamarine. Emerald is thus de¬ 
scribed : 

Gravity.2.7 Alumina.,.. 19 p. ct. 

Hardness.7.5 Glucina (Beryllia).14 p. ct. 

Silica.67 p. ct. 

Lustre, adamantine to vitreous; clearness, translucent, 
sub-transparent; color, rich green; feel, smooth; elasticity, 
brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, crys¬ 
talline. 

The coloring of emerald is due to chromic acid in small 
percentage. Emeralds rank next in value to the diamond, 
ruby, and finer sapphire. One of four grains is estimated 
at thirty dollars. Eight-grain stones are worth seventy-five 








152 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


dollars, and sixteen-grain, perfect specimens, have sold at 
five hundred dollars. 

Emeralds are found among the gravels of the rivers and 
streams in the gold regions, and in pockets in clay slates in 
the primary formations. A report has been made by a trav¬ 
eling mineralogist that the South American emeralds are con¬ 
tained in lime concretions containing also fossils of Creta¬ 
ceous age, and he may be right. Emeralds in rocks and pockets 
are so coated over as to be unrecognizable until tested. 

Oriental Emerald is the green sapphire, and is considered 
very valuable on account of its great rarity as well as its 
great beauty. 

garnet. 

Garnet is nearly a noun of multitude, for there are many 
garnets. We will describe those coming under the head of 
precious garnets: 

Gravity.4.1 Alumina.31 p. ct. 

Hardness.7.0 Iron.43 p. ct. 

Silica.36 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous, resinous; clearness, transparent; color, 
red; feel, smoothish; elasticity, brittle and tough; cleavage, 
distinct; fracture, uneven; texture, crystalline. 

This is the precious garnet known to the jewelers, and its 
value depends altogether on its looks, for it has been known 
to register itself as a ruby and get sold as such. 

There is a large number of other garnets of different com¬ 
position from the above, and about the only use they are to 
man is to act as a cutting powder in place of emery. They 
are pulverized and sold as emery powder extensively. 

Garnets are found in all kinds of pockets and veins in any 
of the primary formations. 

HYACINTH. 

This is really a garnet, but it sells higher when set on a 
pedestal of its own, so the jewelers are gradually differenti¬ 
ating it and suppressing all mention of its relationship to 
garnet. Its points are: 








GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


153 


Gravity.3.6 

Hardness.7.3 

Silica.40 p. ct. 


Alumina.23 p. ct. 

Lime.37 p. ct. 


Lustre, resinous, vitreous; clearness, transparent; color, 
yellow, red, brown; feel, smooth; elasticity, tough and 
brittle; cleavage, imperfect; texture, crystalline. 

This stone is also called Cinnamon Stone , particularly the 
brownish varieties. It is found along with other garnets. 
Another variety of this garnet is called Ouvarovite , and is 
emerald green by reason of the substitution of a little 
chrome replacing part of the alumina. 

There is some reason for the jewelers’ attempt to set up 
hyacinth by itself, because there is another hyacinth, belong¬ 
ing to the tribe of the Zircons. It is as follows: 


Gravity....4.6 

Hardness.7.5 


Silica.33 p. ct. 

Zirconia.67 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous, adamantine; clearness, transparent; 
color, yellow, red, brown; feel, smooth; elasticity, tough 
and brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, conchoidal; text¬ 
ure, crystalline. 

This hyacinth is a little harder and one-fourth heavier 
than the garnet hyacinth, and its lustre is more brilliant. 
Altogether, its intrinsic qualities are such as to rank it 
higher than the garnets, but the market rates it lower. 

Zircons and garnets are found often in the same places, 
and are often mistaken for each other. You can often pick 
up a hatful of crystals, none bigger than duck-shot, and all 
of the less valuable kinds, in a stream bed with no good ones. 

JASPER. 

Jasper is simply quartz tinted with iron oxides, and it 
rarely amounts to enough importance to be ranked as a 
precious stone. It has been used as a material with which 
walls were inlaid in very olden times; and it has been stated, 
in so-called sacred writings of some nations, that the heavens 
were made of jasper; but there is something suspicious 
about the fact that jasper is also the name of the living 













154 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


block of ebonite, in Richmond, which preaches that the 
“ Sun do move.” This mineral is getting us into “ company,” 
so we will drop it. 

LAZULITE. 

This is also called Blue Spar , and its descriptive list is as 
follows: 

Gravity.3.0 I Alumina.34 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.5 Magnesia.13 p. ct. 

Phosphoric Acid.47 p. ct. | Water. 6 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, deep-blue ; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, slight; fracture, 
uneven ; texture, massive, crystalline. 

Like all other minerals, this has its fine and coarse 
varieties, the fine ones being valued, more or less, for 
jewelers’ purposes; and the coarser ones, when plentiful, 
being in some demand as sources of phosphoric acid. 

Lazulites are found among the primary rocks, especially 
among the slates. 

MEERSCHAUM. 

Of course the ornamental sex will object to our classing 
this among precious stones, and will repeat their standing 
joke about meerschaum being mere sham, and all that, but 
we, knowing its extreme preciosity, can smile grandly at 
their ignorance of true value, and preserve our equilibrium 
of unruffled peace of mind by re-lighting our pipe. Here is 
what it is made of. Hydrous silicate of magnesia: 

Gravity.0.8 Magnesia.37 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 Water.13 p. ct. 

Silica.61 p. ct. 

Lustre, refined earthy; clearness, opaque; color, that of 
rich, delicate cream ; feel, smooth ; elasticity, brittle to sec- 
tile ; cleavage, none; fracture, flat to conchoidal; texture, 
superfinely massive. 

The few chemists who are not smokers have had the 
temerity to name this mineral Sepiolite , but they are only 
postponing their day of smoking. The word meerschaum 














GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


155 


means sea foam, and the mineral was so named because it 
was first found floating as sea foam on the coasts of Turkey, 
where the surf washed against a bank of the pure mineral 
itself and washed it into the sea. Being lighter than water, 
it floated and ground itself into a foam-like consistence. 
The Turks gathered and compressed it and carved it into pipe 
bowls, and with their usual sagacity they avoided the rock 
bed of the mineral, and declared it was hardened sea foam. 

For some occult reason Providence has tolerated the exist¬ 
ence at various times of men who have devoted their time 
and so-called brains to the manufacture of an artificial 
meerschaum, but they have uniformly met with such 
failure as they deserved. One fiend, in New York, tried to 
produce a pure silicate of magnesia, cementing tripoli, after 
Ransome’s artificial stone fashion of cementing sand or 
marble dust, by means of a true silicate of lime. He mixed 
tripoli with silicate of soda and modeled it into pipe bowls, 
then bathed it in chloride of magnesia to effect a double 
decomposition, intending to wash out the resulting chloride 
of sodium, but somehow he failed to connect. 

Meerschaum is to be looked for among the talcose rocks, 
as these are allied mineral species—magnesium silicates. 
Meerschaum is undoubtedly derived from them, but how 
it got to be so very light and with such minute pores all 
through it is one of those things “ no fellow has found it.” 
This excessive lightness and porosity constitute the chief 
portion of its value, and secures it against any successful 
attempt to counterfeit it. 

Meerschaum has a number of cousins, but' they are all 
“ poor relations.” Aphrodite is the best of the lot; Smectite 
is another. Gldoropal is a greenish species, but none of them 
come up to the true mineral in its specialties. Hunt for it. 

ONYX. 

Onyx is quartz in the chalcedonic condition, and is con¬ 
structed in films and layers of different colors, like agate, 
but these films in onyx are laid down flat, whereas in agate 


156 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


they are in consecutive skins, like the peelings of an onion. 
The gravity, hardness, composition, etc., of onyx are the 
same as those of agate, and we will not repeat them. 

The value of onyx is in the fact that its films of color are 
so thin that it can be cut in cameo, portions of the figure 
being of one film and color, while other portions are cut 
through to deeper films and colors. The choice colors in 
true onyx are white, black and brown, while a variety called 
Sardonyx has also a film of carnelian red. 

OPAL. 

This is quartz also, but it has some water in it, which pro¬ 
duces decided results in decreasing weight and hardness, 
and otherwise. Its descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.2.2 f Silica.85 to 97 p. ct. 

Hardness.6.0 | Water.15 to 3 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous, pearly, opaline; clearness, transparent; 
color, white, pale, yellow, gray, green, red; feel, smooth; 
elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, even to con- 
choidal; texture, massive, crystalline. 

The peculiarity upon which the value of opal chiefly de¬ 
pends is its power of exhibiting a wonderful play of colors 
as it is turned to various angles with the light. The most 
remarkable is the Fire Opal , which displays all the colors of 
fire-works in successive flashes when turned. Precious Opal 
seems to be the very finest and most delicately shaded and 
tinted of the fire opals. Like chalcedonic quartz, this 
hydrous quartz has its agate-formed stone also. It is made 
up of concentric films and layers of various colored opal, 
and is called Opal Agate; the well-known cat’s eye is one 
of these. 

There is a Jasper Opal which is reddish and of not much 
value or beauty, and there is Float Stone , made up of opal in 
a very porous condition, looking much like a lustrous pumice 
stone, and so ligh as to float on water. The shells of the 
diatoms and other silicious infusoria seem to be of silica in 






GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


157 


the opaline condition, and for this reason tripoli is not hard 
enough to do much in polishing quartz crystals. 

The silicious deposits around what are called petrifying 
springs are of opaline quartz, and wood thus petrified be¬ 
comes wood opal. 

Opal is found almost anywhere that quartz is found, but 
the valuable opals are very scarce. Some are occasionally 
found among the tripoli beds, and they have been found in 
cavities in limestone, just as flint is so found. 

RUBY. 

There are two kinds of ruby, both of great value as gems. 
These are the Spinel Ruby and the sapphire ruby, and we 
will first describe the spinel, as follows: 

Gravity...3.5 I Magnesia.13 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 Chromic Acid. 3 p. ct. 

Alumina.85 p. ct. | 

Lustre, splendent, vitreous; clearness, transparent; color, 
light, medium or dark-red; feel, smooth; elasticity, tough 
but brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, 
crystalline and octahedral, with points and edges cut off 
square, or nearly so. 

This ruby is found generally in localities where serpentine 
and marbles or other limestones are the country rocks, and 
it is often fotind among the water-worn pebbles in the 
stream beds. 

The Sapphire Ruby is described as follows: 

Gravity .4.0 Alumina.100 p. ct. 

Hardness.9.0 Chromic Acid.trace. 

Lustre, splendent, vitreous; clearness, transparent; color, 
light, medium or dark-red; feel, smooth; elasticity, tough, 
brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, 
crystalline, hexagonal. 

This and all other sapphires are pure crystalline -corun¬ 
dum, with a tinge of some coloring matter thrown in. The 
spinel and sapphire, or Oriental Ruby , as it is called, are 












158 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


difficult to distinguish from each other. The item of hard¬ 
ness affords the best test short of a chemical analysis, as the 
weight of the spinel often varies by reason of the presence 
of iron. The beauty of the stone is what names the price 
regardless of the constituents, unless the parties have 
prejudices in favor of 'either spinel or oriental. As a gen' 
eral thing, oriental stones are most valuable, and spinel of 
equal beauty is handicapped by reputation. 

Oriental rubies of the very finest qualities are more valua¬ 
ble than diamonds of the same weight. The English prices 
for cut stones are about eighty dollars for a one-carat stone, 
three hundred and sixty dollars for two carats, eleven to 
twelve hundred dollars for three carats, two thousand for 
four carat stones, and so on. This stone is to be looked for 
in the stream beds and other places wherever corundum or 
emery occur. 

SAPPHIRE. 

These stones come in many colors from Nature’s labora¬ 
tory, but the one labeled sapphire in the jewelers’ vernacular 
is as follows: 

Gravity .4.0 I Alumina.100 p. ct. 

Hardness.9.0 Cobalt.trace. 

Lustre, vitreous, splendent; clearness, transparent; color, 
azure, celestial, etc., blue; feel, smooth; elasticity, tough but 
brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, 
cyrstalline, crystals, hexagonal or double hex. 

Sapphires are to be looked for in the same localities as 
ruby, corundum and emery. Neither ruby nor any of the 
other kinds of sapphire are very attractive in appearance 
when found wild, and when suspiciously heavy pebbles are 
picked up they should always be tried to see whether they 
will scratch a piece of quartz crystal. If they do so, they 
should be preserved and sent to a chemist or reliable 
jeweler for examination. 

Sapphires of most celestial hue and all the other good 
qualities are only worth about one-fourth as much as the. 






GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


159 


oriental rubies of same size, but still they are worth pick- 
ing up. At a recent meeting of a scientific asssociation, 
in Berlin, an escort of soldiers brought in for exhibition a 
sapphire, which, according to the scales and rules of esti¬ 
mation, was worth sixteen millions of dollars. It weighed 
fifteen ounces, and was declared to be at least a “ prince’s 
ransom,” by some enthusiastic royalist. There were other 
members of the association who thought that any nation 
which would pay sixteen millions of dollars for either an 
ornamental stone or an ornamental prince had better spend 
all the rest of their money in lunatic asylums. Another 
member thought the sixteen millions was a small price to 
pay for getting rid of some kings and princes he knew of. 

Yellow sapphires are called Oriental Topaz, green ones 
Oriental Emerald, and violet ones Oriental Amethyst. 


TOPAZ. 


Topaz is described as follows: 


Gravity.3.5 

Hardness.8.0 

Silicon.15 p. ct. 


Aluminum 
Fluorine .. 
Oxygen.... 


30 p. ct. 
20 p. ct. 
,35 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous, splendent; clearness, transparent; color, 
yellow; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle, tough; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, uneven ; texture, crystalline. 

This is the precious topaz. There are other varieties which 
are colored greenish, bluish or reddish, and some even are 
perfectly colorless. When these various colors are in stones 
that are entirely transparent and otherwise perfect they have 
a high value also, for they are sold as rubies, sapphires and 
diamonds to the inexperienced, who too often rely on their 
own judgment and buy things on their good looks. 

The great trouble with topaz is that it is generally clouded 
and only translucent, so that it can only be used in the man¬ 
ufacture of polisliing powders. It is the same hardness as 
spinel ruby and will cut all quartz crystals. 

Topaz changes color under a moderate application of heat, 
and thus changes in its value can be firoUght about. The 









160 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


clear yellow quartz is sometimes called False Topaz , and 
yellow sapphires are Oriental Topaz . Topaz is found in the 
primary formations, especially among micaceous rocks and in 
the stream beds of micaceous districts. 


TOURMALINE. 

Tourmaline in some of its varieties is valued as a gem, 
and is described as follows: 


Gravity.3.1 

Hardness.7.3 

Silica.35 p. ct. 

Alumina.35 p. ct. 


Boric Acid .. 10 p. ct. 

Iron Oxide. 8 p. ct. 

Magnesia.5 p. ct. 

Water, Lithia, etc. 7 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, transparent; color, yellow, 
red, green, blue; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
not perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, crystalline, in crystals 
of three, six, nine and twelve sides—always a multiple of 
three. 

The clear, rich-colored stones are valued highly. The red 
is called Rubellite , and is often passed off for ruby. The 
yellow is sold for topaz, and some amber and honey-colored 
yellow tourmalines are among the most beautiful gems in 
existence. Black and blue tourmalines in long, slender 
three-sided crystals bring good prices as cabinet specimens. 

Tourmaline becomes electric when heated, and the trans¬ 
parent crystals have the property of polarizing light. It is 
found in the primary formations among the more mica¬ 
ceous rocks and slates, and among the crystalline limestones 
and dolomites. Sometimes a mass of rock, several pounds 
in weight, will have forty or fifty spikes of black tourma¬ 
line passing through it in parallel lines. 


TURQUOISE. 

This mineral is described as follows: 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 
Alumina. 


.2.7 

.6.0 

.47 p. et. 


Phosphoric Acid 
Water. 


33 p. ct. 
20 p. ct. 

















GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


161 


Lustre, resinous; clearness, opaque; color, blue-green; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, none; fracture, 
sub-conchoidal; texture, crystalline. 

This stone is found with kaolin and other highly-alumin- 
ous clays, and with the clay slates and shales of the primary 
formations. It is generally decomposed on the outside, and 
looks like a lump of kaolin. Veins containing much alum¬ 
inous mineral, as gangue rock, are the best prospect. The 
old Aztecs valued this gem very highly, and got it mostly 
from New Mexico, where their old pits are now being re¬ 
opened. The Old World is supplied with turquoise from 
mines in Southeast Persia, worked for thousands of years. 


ULTRAMARINE. 


This is also called Lapis Lazuli, and its points are: 


Gravity...2.5 

Hardness.5.8 

Silica.45 p. ct. 


Alumina.32 p. ct. 

Soda and Lime.15 p. ct. 

Sulphur, Iron, etc.8 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, bright blue 
to green; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, distinct; 
fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This is a much-valued gem, and is used in brooches and 
other ornaments which are of such shape as to utilize slab¬ 
shaped blocks. It is also used for all sorts of expensive 
inlaid work in mosaics and the finest ornamental carvings. 
This mineral is to be looked for among the granites and 
other primary rocks, particularly the marbles. It also occurs 
among the limestones of the lower secondaries. 

It takes its name from the lovely blue color of the paint 
which is made by pulverizing and triturating selected pieces 
of this mineral. Ultramarine ranks higher with the artists 
than aquamarine as a color, but aquamarine is the most valu¬ 
able as a gem. 

JADE. 

This is nephrite or kidney stone, and after it is carved by 
the Chinese and other Pagans into images of Beelzebub, and 









1G2 


GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 


other mighty personages, it becomes a precious stone. Its 
points are: 

Gravity.3.0 

Hardness.6.3 

Silica.55 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous, glistening; clearness, semi-translucent to 
opaque; color, white to gray, tinged with blue or green; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle to tough; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect ; fracture, uneven, splintery; texture, compact, massive. 

This is a silicate of lime and magnesia, and is a member of 
the hornblende series. It is found in slabs or chunks among 
the hornblendic rocks, talcose slates, &c., and is well worth 
collecting for carving purposes, cabinet specimens, &c. 


Magnesia.30 p. ct. 

Lime.15 p. ct. 








XI, 

ORNAMENTAL and BUILDING STONES, 


Serpentine — Malachite — Mexican Onyx — Marble— 
Limestone—Sandstone—Slate—Granite— 
Syenite—Gneiss—Porphyry. 


SERPENTINE. 

Other members of this group are Bastite, Cerolite, Gymmite , 
Marmolite. The points on serpentine are : 

Gravity.2.5 to 2.8 Magnesia.43 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 to 3.7 Water.13 p. ct. 

Silica.44 p. ct. 

Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
green; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, flexible to brittle; 
cleavage, imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular. 

Serpentine is very abundant among the primary rocks, 
and amounts to an eruptive rock all by itself, showing in 
dykes and round-backed ridges and hills. It is much in 
favor as a fancy building stone, and properly handled it 
produces very fine architectural effect. When very bright 
green and capable of taking high polish it is much used 
for mantels and other interior work, and is called “ precious ” 
serpentine. When it is streaked with magnesian marble it 
is called “Verde Antique,” and will be referred to further 
along in this book. 










164 ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 


MALACHITE. 

This is copper carbonate, and its descriptive list is as 
follows: 


Gravity.... .3.9 

Hardness...3.8 

Copper Oxide.72 p. ct. 


Carbonic Acid.20 p. ct. 

Water. 8 p. ct, 


Lustre, vitreous, adamantine; clearness, translucent'; 
color, green; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, conchoidal, uneven; texture, massive, 
crystalline. 

This is always found with the other copper ores, and 
when it is not sufficiently brilliant and rich in coloring and 
figure to be used as a gem, or as a material for inlaid work, 
or for table-tops, Chinese vases or devils or other devices, 
it is not a loss by any means, for it is a most valuable ore 
of copper. The green color has an oily look about it, and 
is very much broken up into rounded figures, giving a 
pleasing variety. Perfect malachite, capable of being cut 
into slabs, is very valuable. 

There is a blue variety of this mineral which is usually 
called Azurite and contains a few per cent, less copper and 
water, and a few more of carbonic acid. It is generally 
found as an associate of malachite, and when perfect in 
color, figure and brilliancy, it is fully as valuable. These 
ores are to be hunted for among any or all copper-bearing 
rocks, and are nearly always associated with other copper 
ores. 

MEXICAN ONYX 

This is not a true onyx, as this is calcium carbonate, and 
onyx is silica or quartz. The descriptive list of Mexican 
onyx is as follows: 

Gravity.2.8 Lime.56 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 Carbonic Acid.44 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous to waxy; clearness, translucent; color, 
greenish-white, permeated with veins of all colors; feel, 













ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 165 


harsh ; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conch- 
oidal; texture, massive, crystalline. 

This stone is a deposition of calcite, mixed with impuri¬ 
ties, from the water of limestone springs or streams or 
lakes. As mentioned among marbles, the stalagmites and 
stalactites of wet caverns are examples of this deposition in 
crystalline form, and the writer has had carved lovely paper 
weights, inkstands and pipe bowls from selected stalactite 
materials. 

The veins and their fibres found in the stone are due to 
dust or other colored substance getting on the surface of 
the growing stone, either through accidental deposit, or by 
solution of iron or other coloring mineral in the rocks above 
getting into the limestone water. The stone is found in 
Mexico and in many other places in such position as to indi¬ 
cate that it was the precipitation of calcite out of the calm 
waters of a lake. Other deposits are in fissures or veins or 
caves in limestone rocks, which fissures, etc., have been filled 
thus in past ages. 

MARBLE. 

There are two principal marbles, and one intermediate 
between these two. These are: the lime marble composed of 
the mineral Calcite , the magnesian marble composed of the 
mineral Magnesite , and the intermediate and most common 
marble composed of the mineral Dolomite. The description 
of calcite is as follows: 

Gravity.2.5 to 2.8 Lime.56 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.7 to 3.3 Carbonic Acid.44 p. ct. 

Lustre, sub-vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel, meagre to rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, conchoidal; texture, crystalline, granular. 

This mineral is the basis of all the lime, marbles, chalks, 
marls and limestones. The only reasons that these are not 
all clearly defined crystals are that they contain impurities 
which render them more or less opaque, and that they were 
deposited in such small particles that they appear earthy in 







166 ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 


texture, although the particles generally are seen under the 
microscope to be crystalline when not in the form of shells. 

The mineral magnesite is as follows: 

Gravity.2.9 to 3.3 Magnesia.47 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.7 to 4.4 Carbonic Acid.53 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel, roughish; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This mineral is ten per cent, heavier than calcite, and 
thirty per cent, harder. Another point of difference is that 
magnesite does not rapidly effervesce when touched by cold 
nitric or sulphuric acid, while calcite fumes and bubbles 
actively. 

Dolomite is described as follows: 


Gravity.2.9 

Hardness.3.7 


Calcite.54 p. ct. 

Magnesite.46 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect, fracture, 
conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

When any or all of these three minerals are found green¬ 
ish, yellowish, bluish, reddish, or any other color than white 
or colorless, it is because of the presence of coloring matter 
which is an impurity, strictly speaking. There are very 
many methods or forms of crystallization, but none of them 
change the color of the pure mineral. 

Sometimes calcite is found nearly as clear and colorless as 
the finest diamond, and in this state it is called Iceland Spar 
when in tabular blocks, or Dog Tooth Spar when in sharp- 
pointed double-ended crystals. When it is in long slender 
fibres in bunches it is called Satin Spar. 

Stalagmite is the material deposited on the floors of cav¬ 
erns by the crystallization of calcite out of limestone waters 
dripping from above, and Stalactite is the spike or point from 
which the water drips. These forms are just like the icicles 
at the top and bottom of a water-drip in freezing weather. 












ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 167 


Sometimes these stalactites and stalagmites continue to grow 
until they meet and form Columns shaped like hour glasses, 
at first, but which gradually fill out until they join up with 
their neighbors and fill the cavern or fissure entirely. 

The above are the materials of which the marbles are 
made. They make up differently as regards structure, how¬ 
ever. The pure calcite makes a fine-grained white marble of 
great purity but no variety. Parian marble is composed of 
minute foliations or scales, which are so irregularly placed as 
to seem under the microscope the veriest case of toss and 
confusion that could be imagined, yet the scales are so small 
that it feels smooth as glass when polished. Carrara marble 
is in minute flattened grains, placed criss-cross and every 
which way, but no one would suspect it when looking at the 
exquisite surface of the finest statuary made from that stone. 

Dolomitic marble is more translucent than calcite marble, 
but the grains and crystals are much larger, and appear to 
be star-rayed. This marble also loses its uniform surface 
sooner than the other, and becomes rough and weather¬ 
beaten. The calcite marble, however, tarnishes and stains 
more rapidly than the dolomite. 

There are black marbles also, and some of these have 
white and red and other colored veins traversing them, but 
they are ao easily counterfeited by what is called marbleized 
iron or slate that they are going out of fashion. There is a 
fine black marble in Georgia and Alabama. 

Breccia is a stone made up of angular fragments of marble 
embedded in a cement of the same material; and variegated 
marble is the same thing except that the fragments are 
rounded instead of being angular. The coloring of the frag¬ 
ments and the cement of course vary very greatly. We 
have very fine beds of these marbles in East Tennessee, and 
in Maryland, near Washington, called calico stone. 

Verde Antique is a mixture of marble and serpentine, the 
magnesian marble being most frequently found in this con¬ 
nection, as the serpentine is a magnesian mineral also. The 
white or red or brownish marble alternates in veins and 


168 ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 


coils and rosettes with the brilliant green of the serpentine 
in most exquisite fashion, and- this stone is very highly 
valued for inlaid and other ornamental work for interior 
fittings. 

Lithographic Stone is an excessively fine-grained, sub- 
translucent, slate-colored or yellowish marble that is nearly 
a limestone. The finer varieties^of oolite and other fossil- 
iferous limestones are often polished and used in place of 
the real crystalline marbles. 

LIMESTONE. 

This is simply the re-deposited debris of the marbles of 
the primary formation supplemented by the w r ork of marine 
animals and vegetables of the secondary ages. It is probable 
that those beds in which the most fossils are found are the 
ones formed by the slow building of the infusoria during 
secondary times, while those of larger grain and fewer fossils 
may have been made of materials derived from w r ashing 
down the primary marbles. This latter material is most apt 
to be deposited near the shore line of the ancient seas, and 
to have sand and clays mixed with it; while the limestone 
of secondary age would be formed in deep, still water, and 
would thus be of finest grain unmixed with anything but 
fossils. 

The limestone known as oolite, composed of fish eggs 
about the size of small homeopathic globules, is one of the 
most valuable building stones we have. 

SANDSTONE. 

This is derived from the primary quartzite which has been 
washed down and deposited in new beds, during secondary 
times, and became hardened by time and pressure. The 
sandstones are found in beds all the way up, at intervals, 
throughout the whole secondary series, and the sands con¬ 
stitute at least three-fourths of all the mass of materials in 
this formation. The principal differences to be seen among 
the beds are variations in size of grain. There are four 


ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 169 


great plates of sandstone between the top of the primaries 
and the bottom of the great coal measures. The Potsdam 
sandstone lies on the primaries and forms the crest and west¬ 
ern slope of the Blue Ridge. The Medina sandstone is the 
second, and forms the crest and western slope of North 
Mountain. The Oriskany is the third great sandstone, and 
forms the crest and western slope of Capon Mountain and 
others on that line of upheaval. The Millstone Grit is the 
fourth great sandstone, and forms the base of the coal 
measures. The Mahoning sandstone is the plate that divides 
the coal measures into upper and lower coals. 

The secondary rocks extend westward beyond the Missis¬ 
sippi to the Rocky mountains, broken, of course, where the 
before-named primary upheavals come up through, but the 
further west they extend the thinner they get. Rock beds 
which are hundreds of feet thick in the Appalachian moun¬ 
tains are represented in Missouri by feather-edged beds of 
but few feet in thickness, while at the foot of the Rockies 
many of the beds are missing altogether. 

There are detached areas of secondary rocks east of the 
Blue Ridge, which, although small, are of great value, for 
these areas furnish all the brown-stone used in building in 
New York and other cities in the Eastern States. The 
stone comes from the triassic beds of the secondaries, which 
are found in troughs in the primary rocks all the way from 
Nova Scotia down to Georgia, the beds, however, not being 
continuous. The northern slope of Nova Scotia is of this 
triassic age. Shaler’s quarries, in Connecticut, furnish 
nearly all of this stone used in Boston, Providence, New 
York, New Haven and Hartford. The red soils of New 
Jersey are underlaid with it. Parts of the Susquehanna, 
near York, and all the Monocacy Valley are of this forma¬ 
tion The Grant-Seneca quarries are in this, and the Vir¬ 
ginia Midland railroad runs across many miles of it. The 
gray sandstones in which the Richmond coals are found 
are of this age. The Deep River and Dan River coals of 
North Carolina are in these rocks, and this writer thinks 


170 ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 


he has identified them in South Carolina and in Georgia at 
several points. 

The red sandstone of the Seneca (Potomac) quarries is 
now the fashionable stone, and its great beauty and durabilty 
fully justify its popularity. The great sandstones used in 
the West are typified by the Amherst and Berea blocks of 
the Cleveland Stone Company, which analyze as below: 


Amherst Stone. 


Berea Stone. 


Silica.97.00 p. ct. 

Lime, Magnesia, &c. 1.60 p. ct. 

Iron Oxides. 1.00 p. ct. 

Moisture.40 p. ct. 


Silica.97.00 p. ct. 

Lime, Magnesia, &c. 1.20 p. ct. 

Iron Oxides.1.50 p. ct. 

Moisture.30 p. ct. 


QUARTZITE. 

This is the sandstone of the primary formation, and is 
composed of the silica washed out of such silicated ternary 
minerals as have decomposed. It is the same as the sand¬ 
stone of the secondary and later formations, except that it 
is composed of more perfectly crystalline grains and has 
fewer impurities mixed with it. A variety called Itacolurrrite y 
or‘ elastic sandstone,” has the grains and the connecting 
cement arranged in ball-and-socket fashion, and sometimes 
with small grains of mica scattered through it. This gives 
it a certain flexibility; but as it does not spring back of its 
own accord, it ought not to be spoken of as elastic. It is 
the best natural stone for “inwalls” of furnaces, as its 
peculiar structure prevents expansion or contraction, the 
open joints taking or giving all the slack either way. 

SLATES. 

These are the finest of the stratified laminated rocks, the 
grains being rather more flat than round, and they are 
always laid down flat, thus giving a laminated structure to 
the slate. There are three slates among the primary rocks, 
the bottom one, resting on the schists or gneiss, being the 
micaceous slate; the second, the talcose slate; and the third, 
the chlorite slates. The whole three, together with the clay 









ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 171 


shale next spoken of, are the great gold-bearing rocks of 
the world. The mica slates are blue or gray, specked with 
minute particles of mica, the talcose and chlorites being 
greenish, the chlorite being the cleanest and brightest 
green. The talcose slate is the most auriferous and feels 
greasy. 

From Buckingham county, Virginia, now comes a slate 
from which lovely sills, lintels, steps, &c., are cut. The 
great roofing slates of Pennsylvania come from the Utica 
and Hudson shales, and the Delta, Md., slates are in Parr’s 
Ridge among the primary rocks. The North River blue- 
stone flags come in the Hamilton group. 

GRANITE. 

Granite is built up of well-regulated crystals of feldspar, 
quartz and mica, and it is called granite because it is so per¬ 
fectly granular. The quartz is generally white; the feld¬ 
spar white or pinkish, and the mica is usually lead-colored, 
but often dark-brown or even black, and gives ruling color 
to the mass, except in the red or Scotch granite, where the 
color is due to red feldspar. 

SYENITE. 

This is hornblende granite, the hornblende being in place 
of mica in the true granite. It is more apt to be darker 
in color and considerably finer in grain than the micaceous 
granite. It is found in great sheets and masses like granite. 
This stone is the Egyptian black granite. 

PROTOGENE. 

This is talcose granite, the talc replacing the mica in this 
stone, just as hornblende replaces it in syenite. It is, of 
course, granular, and occurs in great sheets and masses. 
The substitution of talc for mica gives it a slightly greenish 
tinge. 

These three granites are often confused, or taken for each 
other. Some granites are much harder than others, and, 


172 ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 


for a while, it was thought that hard granites made the best 
block pavements; but the softer granites are now coming in 
again, as it is found that they don’t wear smooth to a polish, 
and horses don’t slip on them. 

The granites split in the rift and in the grain with almost 
equal facility, and they can be very finely carved and highly 
polished, and would be the most useful stones known if they 
could stand fire. 

GNEISS. 

This is made up of any of the minerals contained in the 
foregoing granular rocks, but when gneiss contains mica it 
does not often contain either talc or hornblende. When 
containing hornblende it generally omits mica and talc. 
When talc is present mica and hornblende are mostly absent. 
This shows that gneiss is either washed down granite, 
syenite or protogene, or else the granites are melted gneiss. 
The gneiss is evidently a sedimentary rock, as it is coarsely 
and irregularly stratified, and there are reasons for holding 
that it is part of the original sedimentary rocks scalped off 
in the earliest days. 

Gneiss fades upwards into the finer-grained and more per 
fectly stratified schists; downward into the highly crystal" 
line, granular granite rocks, and horizontally it fades into 
granite also. There are cases where granite rocks rest on 
top of gneiss, separated therefrom by a sharp line of contact, 
which shows that the granite overflowed the gneiss in a 
sheet or stream from some neighboring fissure. Other cases 
show the gneiss on top of the granites with equally sharp 
line of contact, which shows that there had been a second 
sedimentary deposit on top of the granite formed by the 
melting of a former bed of gneiss. Still other cases show 
the gneiss fading downwards and laterally also gradually 
into granite, which show that the second heating up was not 
sufficiently intense to melt up the whole mass of gneiss. 

The great quarries at Port Deposit are in this stone, and 
for heavy construction, such as bridge and railroad masonry, 


ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 173 


and sub-walls of all sorts, gneiss is just what is wanted, as 
it is well bedded and quarries easily. 

PORPHYRY. 

True porphyry is composed entirely of feldspar, the 
arrangement being a number of large crystals of feldspar 
embedded in a cement of the same material. It is an 
agglomerate, whereas it is often the case that conglomerates 
are called porphyry by men who ought to learn better. The 
agglomerates are those in which the pebbles and the cement 
are the same materials, while in conglomerates they are of 
different materials. 

The ancients used porphyry and jasper for interior work, 
but the capitol buildings of our new State of Montana, at 
Helena, are built throughout of this stone, and are said to 
be ahead of even the red granite capitol buildings just built 
in Texas. 


XII. 

CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


Natural Cements—Portland—Roman—Rosendale— 
Selenite. Brick Clay—Potter’s Clay—Fire 
Clay — Kaolin — Bauxite — Dinas. 


cement. 

The simplest form of cement is lime, which is calcium 
oxide, and is produced by burning the carbonic acid out of 
limestone or marl or chalk or oyster shells, etc. The resi¬ 
due is lime, and is a white alkaline earth, very caustic. 
This lime, when exposed to dry air, will not re-absorb the 
carbonic acid out of the air ; but, as natural air is never dry, 
the lime absorbs first the moisture and then the carbonic 
acid, and, in time, it returns to its original condition of 
limestone, etc. 

Builders take advantage of this by mixing sand or other 
granulated substance with lime, and putting in water 
enough to make a stiff paste. They use this paste for a 
cement or mortar between their bricks or stones, and when 
the lime takes up carbonic acid out of the air it “ sets ” and 
hardens, and binds the bricks or stones into one wall. It 
is evident that if this lime-cement or mortar be placed under 
water, the air cannot get to it, and the lime can find hardly 
any carbonic acid to absorb; but, nevertheless, ordinary 
lime mortars will harden under water if they have time 




CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


175 


enough, and are protected against any disturbance or wash¬ 
outs by currents, etc. 

This fact shows that there is some other chemical action 
at work not dependent on exposure to air. This action was 
found to be silicification, or the action of the acid silica 
upon the alkaline base, lime, whereby a true silicate of lime 
was produced, and this was found to be a stronger cementing 
factor than the carbonate of lime. 

This is the starting point for Ransome’s artificial stone. 
Ransome mixed selected sand with silicate of soda, and 
molded the stiff paste into blocks, then drenched the blocks 
with solution of chloride of lime. A double decomposition 
took place within the body of the block, the chlorine taking 
the soda for a partner, and the silica joining the lime as 
silicate of lime. The sodium chloride (common salt) was 
afterwards washed out with water, leaving a solid block of 
sand cemented by‘silicate of lime. Very handsome molded 
blocks, of many colors and textures, were formed by mixing 
in proper substances. 

In lime mortar, the silicic acid comes from the clean, 
sharp sand, and is very slow in laying hold of the lime. 
To quicken the silicifying action, selected clay, containing 
silica and alumina in the finest state of pulverization, was 
used to relieve the coarser sand, and the silicate of lime 
formed very rapidly around the sand. The alumina in the 
clay was also found to form still another cementing sub¬ 
stance, but slower in its action, viz.: the aluminate of lime. 
While mortars rely principally on the carbonate of lime, 
cements rely on the silicate of lime for quick setting, and 
the aluminate of lime for slow setting. 

It resulted from all this research that henceforth all first- 
class cements must have the three substances, lime, silica 
and alumina; but, as clay generally contains both alumina 
and silica, the cement-makers confined themselves to se¬ 
curing either a native stone which should combine the sub¬ 
stances in proper proportion, or else to securing the 
substances themselves and combining them. 


176 


CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


It is customary to consider that Nature does tilings better 
than man does them, hut the persons who hold this opinion 
do not reflect that man is merely one of Nature’s fingers 
or instruments, and that as he is the latest and most 
improved instrument, so he should be expected to turn out 
better results than any of his predecessors. Even so it is in 
cements. The forces which piled up lime, silica and alumina 
in beds which are now hardened argillaceous limestones did 
their work without knowledge of what was wanted, but man 
knows more about it, and so he puts in the proper propor¬ 
tions of each substance. 

The native limestones are used by most of the cement- 
makers of this country, as it so happens that we have rocks 
here which are much more nearly just the proper composi¬ 
tion than those available for the purpose in England. The 
localities where these argillaceous limestones are found in 
this country are very numerous, and will not be mentioned 
here, as almost any district among the secondary rocks will 
supply them. The general proportions of the substances in 
these rocks should pretty nearly agree with the analysis of 
Portland cement as given below, because, otherwise, the party 
who puts his money into the venture is putting it in peril. 
There is, however, considerable leeway around these propor¬ 
tions, for a cement that bears on the aluminates as its chief 
factor, although a slow-setting cement, is often better for 
certain purposes than the cement which counts on its 
silicates. The Portland cement, celebrated the world over, 
is made normally with an equilibrium between the silicates 
and aluminates, and the makers vary it for special orders only. 

The composition of normal Portland cement is about as 
follows: 

Lime.60 p. ct. Alumina. .8 p. ct. 

Silica...25 p. ct. Impurities.7 p. ct. 

The impurities are generally made up of iron oxide, mag¬ 
nesia, gypsum, potash, soda, and other trash. 

The best Portland cement-makers grind together selected 







CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


177 


chalk and clay with water, then make the pulp into balls 
and burn them at a white heat for several days. Then the 
calcined balls are ground to impalpable powder and packed 
in barrels lined with prepared paper. 

The old Roman cements differed from each other as much 
as ours do, but they all contained a large percentage of iron 
oxide. An average is as follows: 

Lime.55 p. ct. Alumina. 7 p. ct. 

Silica.22 p. ct. Iron Oxide.12 p. ct. 

Together with four per cent, of impurities. 

There is a large class of very good but slow-setting cements 
in this country which contain magnesia along with lime as 
the alkaline basis of the silicate and aluminate compounds. 
The cements called “ Rosendale ” are of this class. These 
magnesian cements, when properly treated in all respects, 
make one of the very best cement joints attainable, but great 
care must be taken to preserve them, in storage or trans¬ 
portation, against access of moisture. 

There is still another American cement called “ selenite,” 
which contains sulphate of lime (plaster of Paris) and is a 
very quick-setting cement. If any silicate or aluminate of 
lime forms in this cement it must do so after the sulphuric 
acid has taken all the lime it can carry, and a little is left over 
for the silica and alumina. 

It is a question open to discussion as to whether it is better 
to mix up various cementing compounds in any one cement, 
as they may obstruct or alter each other. 

The Cumberland or Upper Potomac cements are all quick¬ 
setting natural cements of great merit when fresh, and 
should be more extensively used. 

CLAY. 

Clay is a name for a multitude of various stuffs, but it is 
properly confined to any mixture of silica and alumina in a 
finely pulverized condition. 

Brick Clay is the bottom of the series, and is composed of 
silica and alumina primarily, but has all sorts of odds and 







178 


CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


ends of minerals mixed up in it. Burned bricks are nearly 
always red, and the more brilliantly red they are the more 
highly they are valued. This coloring matter is iron, and a 
singular fact in this connection is that the clays which pro¬ 
duce the reddest bricks are nearly always yellowish-blue 
clays. They, of course, contain iron in the carbonate con¬ 
dition, and the burning converts the iron into hematite. A 
clay which makes a dull, yellowish-colored but otherwise 
good strong brick can be made to produce a cherry-red brick 
by using pulverized iron ore in the molding-sand, and this 
is done in Washington and some other places by using the 
mineral Bauxite mentioned at the end of this sub-chapter. 
Milwaukee brick are made of a clay containing no iron, and 
they are cream-colored. This color is becoming fashionable 

Potter s Clay is often made out of brick clay by putting 
the latter in vats and stirring it with water until the finer 
clayey portions are suspended in the muddy water. The 
water is then drawn off and the fine clay is allowed to settle 
in other vat£ A bed of brick clay, if so located as to have 
the proper slope, can be thus almost entirely washed down 
into settling vats cut into the clay itself at the bottom of 
the slope. The stirring vats in these cases are cut into the 
clay at the top of the slope, and are gradually worked down 
the slope by cutting and washing the materials of the down¬ 
hill sides of the vats, while the pebbles and coarse stuff are 
cast up hill. The muddy water runs down hill either in 
ground-cut sluices or in troughs. 

Beds of nearly pure potter’s clay are, of course, more val- 
able to potters than ordinary brick clay, but the difference 
is not very great, because no clay in nature is found pure 
enough to make good ware, and it all has to be washed by 
suspension in water and precipitation, anyhow. Clay beds 
are, however, found pure enough to make rough, coarse ware 
out of without washing, and from these come the jugs and 
crocks and jars and flower pots. 

Fire Clays are the clays which are found under the coal 
beds of the true coals. They generally contain sixty per 


CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


179 


cent, of eilica to thirty of alumina and ten of trash, although 
many good fire clays differ greatly from these proportions. 
The fire clays under the coal beds are of almost any color, 
but bluish or yellowish-gray predominates. The clay is hard 
and compact and breaks into little cubical blocks, presenting 
very little appearance of being plastic. Some weathering 
and working in a pug mill are required to develop its 
plasticity. 

It is mixed with a little sand and burned into bricks, which 
are used to line all sorts of furnaces where resistance to 
great heat is required. The stability of the lining of furnaces 
requires not only that the material shall not melt down, but 
that it shall not contract or expand under the changing 
degrees of heat, and this requires that the bricks should be 
somewhat porous, so as to take up their own “slack.” 
They are, therefore, sometimes made up with fine sawdust 
or coal dust mixed in the clay, this dust burning out in the 
kiln and leaving pores all through the body of the brick. 
Fire clays are found in many other localities besides those 
mentioned under the coal beds; but it should be borne in 
mind that any clay already brightly colored, or which con¬ 
tains iron in any form, will never serve for a high-heat fire 
clay, as the iron acts as a flux for the silica of the clay, form¬ 
ing silicate of iron. 

Kaolin is porcelain clay, and it is theoretically pure clay. 
Its descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.2.5 Alumina...40 p. ct. 

Hardness.....1.0 Water.13 p. ct. 

Silica.47 p. ct. 

Lustre, pearly to dull; clearness, opaque ; color, white to 
grayish; feel, greasy; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, earthy and 
massive, but under microscope is minute scaly. 

This clay is the residuum of the decomposition of feld¬ 
spar. When the potash or other soluble alkali is washed 
out into the soil, the silica and alumina are left behind as a 








180 


CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


bed of white clay. Even this clay, found just where it was 
formed, is rarely so pure that it can be used without wash¬ 
ing and refining by suspension in water and subsequent 
precipitation. It becomes still more impure when Mother 
Nature supervises the washing, for she cuts it out of the 
hill with her water sluices and washes it down into beds 
below, and gets all sorts of impurities mixed in with it, 
and, worst of all, she is apt to get iron into it. A clay may 
be a most beautiful white and yet burn into a red or yel¬ 
lowish porcelain, or the clay may be dirty with organic 
matter and yet burn into a pure white porcelain. 

The finest porcelain clays in the world are, undoubtedly, 
those of China and Japan, and the next are at Limoges, in 
France. There is recently reported from Northwestern 
Louisiana a bed of clay which is so fine that French porce¬ 
lain men are now organizing to use it in new works to be 
established in New Orleans. The kaolin beds of South 
Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, and some other American 
States contain very fine clay, but somehow they don’t get 
up a reputation for themselves, and they have a heavy tariff 
to secure them against competition, too. The English and 
French kaolins come to New York in square cakes, stamped 
with analysis and maker’s name, and sell at twenty to 
twenty-eight dollars per ton, tariff paid. The American 
kaolins come in bags and barrels and sometimes in bulk, 
with no analysis or maker’s guarantee, and sell at ten to 
fifteen dollars per ton. This w T ould soon be rectified if 
American makers would wash, conscientiously, their pro¬ 
ducts, and stamp them so that buyers would know what 
they were buying. 

The surfacing and loading down of writing paper that is 
not done by barytes is done by kaolin, and its price is thus 
raised from a clay price to a paper price. 

Bauxite is a substance resembling a pure Fuller's Earth , 
and is not properly a clay, as it contains no silica. Its 
composition is as fpllows: 


CEMENTS AND CLAYS. 


181 


Gravity.2.9 Iron Oxide.27 p. ct. 

Hardness.0.8 Water..21 p. ct. 

Alumina.52 p. ct. 

It is a reddish dust, which can be worked up into a paste 
with water. It is not fusible by any means yet tried. 
There are deposits of an impure and micaceous variety near 
Alexandria, Virginia, and the Washington brickmakers 
use it for molding-sand. 

Dinas is the so-called clay out of which the well-known 
dinas brick is made, and it is almost entirely silica, and, 
therefore, not properly a clay, but it is marketed as such. 
It is simply the silicious part of a clay which has been 
naturally washed. 











XIII 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS 




Salt—Soda—Borax—Saltpetre—Ammonia—Gypsum— 
Phosphate Rocks—Potash Rocks—Marl. 


salt. 


When a chemical gentleman in spectacles asks for Halite 
or Sodium Chloride you may know he means salt, and if he 
goes on to describe it he will do it nearly this way: 


2.1 to 2.2 Sodium. 

..2.5 Chlorine 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 


39 p. ct. 
61 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous; clearness, sub-transparent; color, color¬ 
less, white-yellowish; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular, 
crystalline. 

The white and colorless varieties are pure salt, and the 
reddish, yellowish, bluish, purplish crystals all contain some 
impurity in slight degree. Lime and magnesia, in the form 
of chlorides and sulphates, are the most frequent mixtures, 
but potash is also sometimes present. 

Owing to its great solubility, salt is more frequently found 
in water than as a rock, and most of the salt of commerce 
is obtained by boiling or otherwise evaporating the waters 
of the sea or of salt lakes or of salt springs. These springs are, 
of course, charged with salt during the passage of their waters 
through underground rock salt. In some European salt 









SALTS AOT> FERTILIZERS. 


188 


mines, where the salt is so much mixed with earth and rock 
and sand as to make its separation expensive, they dig holes in 
it and fill them with water, which water they pump out again 
after it has dissolved enough salt to make its boiling profit¬ 
able. 

The salt in Louisiana is regularly mined dry, while nearly 
all other American salt is the result of boiling it from brine 
pumped up from the salt rocks through drilled holes. 

SODA. 

This is the second strongest of the alkalis, potash being 
the first. The name soda really means the caustic oxide of 
the metal sodium, but in commerce it is taken to mean any 
of three carbonates—the carbonate, the sesqui-carbonate, 
and the bi-carbonate This last is in most general use, and 
its points are: 

Gravity.1.8 Soda.22 p. ct. 

Hardness....2.0 Carbonic Acid & Water,78 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white to 
gray; feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

All three of the carbonates are found in greater or lesser 
quantities all over the West, and many of the lakes and 
streams and springs are tainted and alkaline with soda. 
The straight carbonate sal soda, is the most abundant, and 
it contains thirty-eight per cent of soda. 

The soda lakes of the regions west of the Rocky moun¬ 
tains are a prominent feature in the national economy, and 
have affected prices all over the world in the three articles 
of salt, borax, and soda. As these three important minerals 
are merely compounds of the one substance, soda, they very 
naturally are all found together. The same basin will hold 
all three in solution in its water during the rainy season, 
and will drop them in different layers during each dry season 
when it dries up. 






184 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


BORAX. 

This is borate of soda, and its points are: 

Gravity.1.7 Boric Acid.37 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.3 Water.47 p. ct. 

Soda.16 p. ct. 

Lustre, resinous to vitreous; clearness, sub-translucent; 
color, white; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, 
perfect; fracture, conchoidal; texture, crystalline; taste, 
sweetish. 

Borax is found in small quantities in many parts of the 
world, but the cheapest supply comes from the Borax Lake 
of California, and from other lakes or dried-up lake basins 
found among the other curiosities of the lands west of the 
Rocky mountains. Borax is valuable for many purposes in 
manufacturing; and there are two kinds, the prismatic and 
the octahedral—the prismatic having the composition shown 
above, while the octahedral has only thirty per cent, of 
water. 

The boric or boracic acid is also found native, and is to be 
looked for in all volcanic regions, and also among salt beds 
and rocks, and among the gypsum rocks. It is very similar 
to borax, but it is only half as hard, and a little lighter in 
weight. It also tastes more acid and less sweet. It is called 
Sassolite , technically. Sussexite is a borate of manganese and 
magnesia, and is much harder and heavier than borax, and 
has little or no taste, but is white and translucent. Boratite 
is borate of magnesia and chlorine, and is a little heavier 
and twice as hard as borax. TJlexite is borate of lime and 
soda, weight and hardness about like sassolite, fibrous texture. 

SALTPETRE 

This is nitre, or potassium nitrate, and contains 39 per 
cent, of potassium, 14 of nitrogen and 47 of oxygen. It is 
rarely found native, but its cousins, the nitrates of soda and 
lime and magnesia, occur in great beds in the rainless up¬ 
land nlains of South America, and the potassium nitrate is 








SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


185 


easily made from these by substituting potash for the other 
alkaline bases. 

It is not known just how this nitrogen gets into chemical 
combination with the oxygen in the air so as to form nitric 
acid, but electricity is believed to have something to with it. 
Yet, strange as it may seem, all our tremendous expendi¬ 
tures for modern warfare, and for big and little guns, from 
the 100-ton steel rifle cannon to the 6-ounce Derringer, are 
based upon the expectation that Nature will continue to 
combine these gases into acid, so that we can make gun¬ 
powder and dynamite and other explosives, with which to 
kill each other, or make a noise on the 4th of July, and 
incidentally set fire to our houses. 

About one-third of the powder used by the Confederate 
army during the civil war of 1861-5 was made from nitrate 
of lime leached out of the dry earth of limestone caverns, 
the lime being afterwards cut out by home-made carbonate 
potash, and the resulting saltpetre obtained by boiling and 
crystallization. This lime nitrate is also found under old 
houses and out-buildings, and is generated in compost heaps 
and nitre beds under cover. 

AMMONIA. 

This is an alkaline gas, and is a product of fermentation 
or decomposition. It is made up of the gases nitrogen and 
hydrogen, and can be liquefied by either cold or pressure. 
The liquid can also be frozen into a white crystalline mass. 
There are several salts of ammonia, such as the carbonate 
and the chloride, this last being better known as sal am¬ 
moniac. The carbonate is not found as a natural mineral, 
but the chloride is found occasionally in dry localities, such 
as nitrates are found in, and can be described thus: 

Gravity.2.0 to 2.3 I Ammonia.34 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.6 to 2.0 | Chlorine.67 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
white; feel, smooth to greasy; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
imperfect; fracture, uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 






186 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


A great source of ammonia in all its forms is found in 
the manufacture of gas. It is formed during the destructive 
distillation of any of the hydro-carbons, but particularly 
the bituminous coals. It can be produced by getting up a 
decomposing disturbance with almost any kind of vege¬ 
table or animal substance, and it is the chief valuable con¬ 
stituent in manures, furnishing, as it does, nearly all the 
nitrogen consumed by plants. 

GYPSUM. 

This is variously called Sulphate of Lime , Land Plaster , 
Plaster of Paris , and its points are: 

Gravity.2.3 Lime....33 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.7 Water.21 p. ct. 

Sulphuric Acid.46 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous to pearly; clearness, opaque to translu¬ 
cent; color, white, gray, light-yellow; feel, meagre; elas 
ticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; 
texture, massive, crystalline. 

This mineral occurs in all forms and conditions, from the 
crystalline Selenite, transparent as glass, or the massive Ala¬ 
baster, opaque to sub-translucent and many-tinted, down to 
the earthy varieties, looking like dirty chalk. Satin Spar is 
a beautiful fibrous variety, with a pearly lustre. 

Gypsum is primarily a rock, and a big one, too, for there 
are beds of it in Southwest Virginia five hundred feet thick 
and occupying hundreds of square miles of area. This par¬ 
ticular bed is not much used for fertilizing purposes, as it is 
the home of the salt waters of that district, and the salt is 
mixed with the gypsum. 

Gypsum burned and ground like the cements becomes 
plaster of Paris and “sets” much more quickly, when 
watered, than any other cement. It is to be looked for as a 
rock bed and regular member of the limestone groups in all 
the formations above the primaries. 

There is another mineral which is called Anhydrite, which 
often occurs with gypsum, and which is about the same 
thing as gypsum with the water left out. Its points are: 








SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


187 


Gravity...2.9 

Hardness.. ....3.3 


Lime.41 p. ct. 

Sulphuric Acid.59 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous to pearly; clearness, opaque to translu¬ 
cent ; color, white, gray, red; feel, meagre; elasticity, brittle 
to sectile; cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, 
fibrous, foliated, granular or massive. 

This mineral is much harder than the hydrous sulphate, 
and a little heavier also. The finer varieties are carved into 
ornamental articles, and the mineral is found in company 
with the true gypsum. Neither the hydrous nor the anhy¬ 
drous sulphates effervesce when touched with acids as the 
lime and other carbonates do. 

PHOSPHATE ROCKS. 

There are a great man} r minerals which contain phos¬ 
phoric acid, and some of them are abundant enough to be 
of very great importance to mankind. The fact that some 
of them are of animal origin does not conflict with the other 
fact that they are also rocks, for when we think about water 
being simply the liquid form of the rock ice, and that lime¬ 
stone and coal are rocks which were once of purely animal 
and vegetable matter respectively, we will be ready to con¬ 
cede that bones, carcasses and excrement may become, in 
time, guano and South Carolina phosphate rocks. We will 
look first at the earliest of all the phosphate rocks, which is: 

Apatite, which is Phosphate of Lime . 


Gravity.3.1 

Hardness.4.8 


Phosphoric Acid.43 p. ct. 

Lime.55 p. ct. 


Lustre, vitreous to resinous; clearness, transparent, all the 
way to opaque; color, blue-green, but sometimes white-gray 
or yellow-brown; feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
imperfect; fracture, uneven to conchoidal; texture, fibrous 
to tabular, also granular to massive. 

Although the color of this mineral is so various, its powder 
and streak are always white. It varies greatly in clearness, 
but the transparent varieties are scarce, and the earthy, 












188 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


opaque textures are also scarce, most of the rock being 
bluish-green, about sub-translucent and clouded, crystalline. 
There is always a small percentage of chlorine or fluorine 
present, and sometimes both. 

This rock is found among the older primaries and crystal¬ 
line rocks. It occurs in veins as a regular vein stone, and 
in Canada it fills great lenticular-shaped fissures found at 
intervals over many hundred square miles of territory. It 
is regularly mined by incorporated companies; and sells 
readily at thirty-five dollars per ton by the ship-load. It is 
principally shipped to Europe, where it competes with the 
best of guano. 

This mineral has not been found in any great abundance 
in the United States, but it has not been thoroughly searched 
for. There are a number of other phosphates, mentioned 
below, any of which would reward richly any one who 
should find them in good quantity. 

Wcignerite is phosphate of magnesia, containing 44 per 
cent, of phosphoric acid, and is very like apatite, slightly 
harder; color, yellowish. 

Tribute is phosphate of iron, manganese and lime, etc., 
containing 34 per cent, of phosphoric acid. It is also harder 
than apatite, and is of brownish coloring; sub-translucent. 

Ambligonite is phosphate of alumina, lithia, fluorine, and 
other things, containing 50 per cent, of phosphoric acid. 
This is 6.0 hard, 3.5 heavy, and otherwise very much like 
apatite. 

Wavellite is phosphate of alumina also, containing 35 per 
cent, of phosphoric acid. It has 26 per cent, of water in it, 
and so is only 3.5 hard. 

We seriously advise all our readers who are located among 
the primary rock formations to set up a search for these 
minerals, as they have never been really looked for in our 
country, and a good body of them would be a big find for 
the discoverer. Remember that they are all about one-fifth 
heavier than quartz, and only about two-thirds as hard, so 
that quartz will cut them. 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


189 


Carolina Phosphates are the remains of a lot of fish, etc., 
that lived in tertiary times along the coast of South Caro¬ 
lina, Georgia and Florida, and probably a great many other 
places which we have not yet discovered. These fish appear 
to have made a sort of cemetery of some hundreds of square 
miles of coast lands, and their remains are in many places 
piled up several feet in thickness. In many places this 
stratum of phosphates forms the actual bottom of rivers 
and estuaries, and is dislodged and raised to the surface by 
means of dredging machines, while in other places the 
stratum is overlaid by the tertiary and quaternary clays 
and sands to such depth as to render the mining very ex¬ 
pensive. 

These bones and debris have cemented and compacted 
with each other to such an extent as to be properly called 
a rock, and it requires much cutting and cracking to detach 
sharks’ teeth and Coprolites and other special specimens 
from the mass. They are now beginning to call this rock 
mass Osteolite , and they sell it by the ship-load in Charleston, 
or other good seaport, at five to seven dollars per ton. It is 
only about half as rich in phosphoric acid as apatite. 

Down in Florida, along.the Gulf coast, and particularly in 
the valley of the Withlacoochee River, there has recently 
been discovered an extensive deposit of phosphate stuffs, 
and much of it appears to be a true phosphatic marl. 

Guano , like Carolina phosphates, is the result of animal 
matter mixed up with enough lime to compact and 
mineralize it. On the guano islands, the guano on top is 
still growing by fresh deposits, just as peat is still growing 
on the top of peat bogs, while down at the bottom of the 
guano it is a rock, osteolite, with no vestige of animal 
structure, just as at the bottom of very deep peat bogs, the 
peat is actually lignite or coal, with no vestige of vegetable 
structure. 

Guano varies in composition greatly, as in the dry climate 
of Peru there is no rain water to wash and leach out the 
soluble acids, ammonias* etc., while in rainy climates the 


190 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


insoluble phosphate of lime is all that is left. In order to 
make good fertilizer out of this plain lime phosphate we 
have to procure those soluble acids, ammonias, etc., from 
other sources and put them back in the lime phosphates. 
The following are two analyses of different guanos, which 
will show the difference : 


Peruvian. 

Organic Matter. ...52 p. ct. 

Lime Phosphate. 23 p, ct. 

Moisture.15 p. ct. 

Alkaline Salts.6p. ct. 

Free Phosphoric Acid, 2 p. ct. 

Silica, etc.2 p. ct. 


Caribbean. 


Organic Matter.8 p. ct. 

Lime Phosphate.77 p. ct. 

Moisture. 7 p. ct. 

Lime Sulphate.6 p. ct. 

Silica, etc............. 2 p. ct. 


The Peruvian was worth twice as much as the Caribbean. 


POTASH ROCKS. 

Potash is one of the elements which go to form a good 
soil. It is the chief ingredient in the best European fer¬ 
tilizers, but among American farmers it is sadly neglected. 
The consequence of this is that European land, is constantly 
growing richer, and is now better than when it was first 
cleared up, fifteen or more centuries ago. English tenant 
farmers pay twenty dollars per acre per year rent for best 
wheat lands, whereas the entire crop of our ordinary Penn¬ 
sylvania wheat lands don’t bring much more. 

Fertilizers to be complete must contain the ammoniacal 
or nitrogenous elements, the phosphates and the potashes. 
Peruvian guano contains the necessary ammonia and phos¬ 
phates, but does not contain the potash, so the wise Euro¬ 
pean farmers mix the German potash salts with the Peru¬ 
vian guano, and, verily, they have their reward in big crops 
and richer lands and advancing valuations. American farm¬ 
ers use fertilizers made up of Carolina phosphates, Carib¬ 
bean cheap guano, diatoms, and a lot of animal ammon¬ 
iacal matter, but no potash, and they have their reward, 
also, in good crops at first, gradually declining into bad 
ones, and then into sassafras, broom sedge and bankruptcy. 













SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


191 


The prime minerals, mica and feldspar, are the sources 
from which all potash is derived. Some mica contains 
twelve per cent, of potash, and some feldspar contains 
seventeen per cent. As these minerals decompose through 
old age or other causes the potash is released from its sili- 
cated condition and forms combinations with chlorine and 
sulphuric* acid, thus becoming a soluble salt. In this condi¬ 
tion, and with the aid of water, it permeates all through the 
soil, and tinctures sea water everywhere. Great beds of 
chloride and sulphate of potash are found alternating with 
beds of salt in places where they seem to have been left by 
the drying up of seas, such as the Dead Sea and others. 

Kainite is the sulphate of potash and is the most useful of 
these salts. It contains, also, other things, as will be seen in 
the following description: 


Gravity.2.7 

Hardness.2.3 

Potash Sulphate.25 p. ct. 

Magnesia Sulphate .. .14 p. ct. 


Sodium Chloride.32 p. ct. 

Magnesia Chloride—13 p. ct. 

Water.14 p. ct. 

Trash.2 p. ct. 


Lustre, sub-vitreous to resinous; clearness, translucent; 
color, ashy-gray; feel, greasy; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, 
good; fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This is kainite as it comes to America, and it has, like all 
other minerals, a considerable amount of other salts which 
might be called impurities in some senses of the word. The 
sodium chloride (common salt), for instance, does very little 
good to vegetation, and the magnesia chloride does still less, 
but the magnesia sulphate is of considerable value in causing 
the perfect seeding of grains and the boiling of cotton. 
These two chlorides, however, become of value when the 
kainite is used in composting stable manure, as it retains the 
ammonia, which would otherwise be lost. They have an 
excellent effect also when scattered on stall floors and feed¬ 
ing lots. 

Kainite is really the definite mineral Polyhalite , with such 
admixture of soda salts as naturally would be deposited 
with it during its precipitation out of evaporating sea water. 









192 


SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


The chloride salts are not an artificial adulteration, and 
when kainite is used in composting, the chlorides are not an 
adulteration at all. 

Carnallite is chloride of potassium and magnesium, with 
water. It is also a soluble salt, and its description is as 
follows: 

Gravity.2.5 

Hardness.2.1 

Potassium Chloride...27 p. ct. 

Lustre, greasy; clearness, translucent; color, white to 
pinkish; feel, greasy; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, none; 
fracture, conchoidal; texture, granular, crystalline. 

Sylvite is simply pure chloride of potassium, and its de¬ 
scriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.2.0 Potassium.52 p. ct. 

Hardness...2.0 Chlorine.48 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, transparent; color, white or 
colorless; feel, greasy; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, conchoidal; texture, crystalline. 

This also is a soluble potash salt, although it contains no 
water of hydration. All three of these—kainite, carnallite 
and sylvite—are “ German potash salts,” but this name is 
more distinctively applied b.y the trade to the kainite. They 
abound most plentifully at Strassfurt and at Leopoldshall, in 
Germany, where they are found in beds intermixed with 
beds of rock salt over a territorial area of six hundred 
square miles. Whether they are also to be found around our 
American salt regions and under Great Salt Lake or the 
borax lakes of the far West is not yet known. 

The kainite is the most used of the above salts, and sells 
at nine to ten dollars per ton in Baltimore. The chlorides 
have to undergo a treatment with sulphuric acid to get the 
very best results, and, therefore, do not sell so high. We 
think our feldspars or micas might be treated with acid and 
an economical potassium sulphate produced. 


Magnesium Chloride. .34 p. ct. 
Water.39 p. ct. 











SALTS AND FERTILIZERS. 


193 


MARL. 

This is the lime rock of the tertiary formation, and is to 
this formation what chalk is to the upper secondary, lime¬ 
stone to the lower secondary, and marble to the primaries. 
It is soft yet, hut if we pile a few miles of new rocks on top 
of it, and wait, say a few millions of years, it will guarantee 
any required degree of hardness. It is the work of those 
tireless infusoria who go on locking up carbon without ask¬ 
ing themselves when there will be no more unappropriated 
carbon to lock up. There are marls which contain phos¬ 
phoric acid combined with lime, and these are great marls 
for fertilizing purposes. They are generally granular in 
texture and greenish in color, and are, therefore, called 
“ green sand marls.” The phosphoric acid or phosphate of 
lime is supposed to come from the great deposits of bones 
and fish remains found in and about these marls. There are 
other green marls which contain iron sulphate, and as these 
sour the land, the amateur fertilizing farmer had better look 
sharp. The writer has known, however, of several cases in 
the Patuxent regions of Maryland in which this sour marl 
was spread and killed everything, but in the third year mag¬ 
nificent crops were produced, and there have been four suc¬ 
cessive crops since, all good ones, too; from which it would 
seem that exposure to the weather decomposed the iron sul¬ 
phate and released the sulphuric acid, which in turn attacked 
the lime and formed plaster. 

This acid marl in the tide-water country along the Atlantic 
coast is generally a dirty black, and sticky when wet, and 
contains lignite coal disseminated all through it, but this is 
rarely of any account, although in former times the sul¬ 
phuric acid and alum were extracted to some profit while 
prices were high. Above this black acid marl, which is 
sometimes as much as sixty to seventy feet thick, the true 
green sand marl beds are found. This marl is simply soft 
carbonate of lime with grains of the green mineral glaucon¬ 
ite, which is a hydrous silicate of iron and potash which 
has become changed by phosphoric acid resulting from de¬ 
composition of animal remains. 


XIV. 

MINERAL PAINTS. 


Ochre— Umber —Vermilion — Smalt—Ultramarine— 
Aquamarine. 


ochre. 

Under this name are grouped a number of substances used 
as paints, but the iron paints are the only ones which are 
legitimately entitled to its use. 

Red Ochre is the iron ore hematite in the earthy condition. 
Sometimes it is found naturally in this condition, and is then 
generally better than when prepared by man, but that is 
because man is in too much of a hurry and don’t put work 
enough into the pulverization of the ore. But there are 
instances where this work has been put into it by means of 
the heaviest machinery, and in these instances the ochre is 
the finest known. The “ dyestone ” ore is in the best condi¬ 
tion for pulverization. Red ochre can also be made out of 
limonite ore by first calcining it thoroughly and then pulver¬ 
izing it. 

Brown Ochre is magnetite ore thoroughly pulverized. It 
makes a very dark and beautiful brown, and is much used. 

Yellow Ochre is limonite ore thoroughly pulverized and not 
calcined. Calcining limonite merely burns out the water 
and turns the ore into ordinary hematite. 

Tt is obvious that by mixing these ochres any shade of 
brown, red, or yellow may be produced, and they will all be 




MINERAL PAINTS. 


195 


pure metallic paint, unless some kaolin or other adulterant 
is put in. 

There has recently been utilized a long-known deposit of 
ochres found in the limonite beds on the Catoctin iron tract, 
in Maryland, and these ochres are turning out some of the 
most exquisite colors. The mineral is in the earthy condi¬ 
tion, and is separated into different shades by washing, mix¬ 
ing and settling, after which it is dried and triturated or 
ground. The quality of ochre, apart from its color, depends 
on the amount of work put into it by either nature or man 
or both, and its price depends on the market or the ability 
of the salesman or the interests of the purchaser. 

UMBER. 

This is, like ochre, a metallic paint, and is simply pulver¬ 
ized manganese oxide. Like ochre, it can be made of differ¬ 
ent shades by burning or not burning the ores, and then 
mixing them to order. It is also often mixed with the ochres 
and produces a purplish paint that is in high favor. Some¬ 
times a very fine umber is found in beds where it has been 
deposited after having been finely pulverized by Mother 
Nature, in her kindness, but yet it must be suspended in 
water and cleared of impurities if wanted for the finest 
work. 

VERMILION. 

This is another mineral paint, and is the mercurial ore, 
cinnabar, in a finely pulverulent condition. It sometimes 
occurs native in this condition, but never entirely pure, so 
that man has to either ' sublime the ore and re-condense it in 
another vessel, leaving the impurities behind, or he first 
makes pure mercury and then combines it with pure sul¬ 
phur, and thus makes a pure cinnabar ore. 

Fine vermilion will sometimes lose its sulphur from some 
unknown cause, and the whole block will turn into metallic 
mercury, much to the puzzlement of both teacher and pupil 
in young ladies’ art schools. 


196 


MINERAL PAINTS. 


SMALT. 

Smalt is made from the cobalt ores, and is used for the 
decoration of pottery and porcelain, and glass staining prin¬ 
cipally. The smalt colors all stand fire well. 

ULTRAMARINE. 

This is the heavenly-blue color made by finely pulverizing 
the cuttings from the gems made from the precious stone 
lapis lazuli, and is a very favorite and high-priced artists’ 
paint. 

AQUAMARINE. 

This is the lovely green-blue color made by finely pulver¬ 
izing the cuttings from the gems made from the bluish beryl, 
or aquamarine stone. 

WHITE AND RED LEAD. 

These are carbonates and oxides of lead, and must be 
made artificially in order to meet the requirements of the 
market. 

BARYTIC PAINTS. 

These paints are simply pulverized barytes, or barium sul¬ 
phate. 

ZINC WHITE. 

This is zinc oxide, and is made artificially. 


XV. 

GRITS AND SPARS. 


Tripoli—Corundum—Emery—Novaculite—Barytes— 
Feldspar—Fluorspar—Cryolite—Strontia. 


TRIPOLI. 

This is an earth more or less hard and compacted into a 
semblance of rock. It is composed of the shells of diatoms 
and other infusoria which use silica for sliell-building. 
Other varieties of infusoria use lime and carbonic acid, and 
build up limestones when they drop their shells to the sea 
bottoms. 

The merest speck of tripoli, barely visible to the naked 
eye, if placed under a powerful microscope, will be seen to 
be composed of some dozens of curious little shapes, 
spicules, wheels, tripods, etc. Each one of these is a shell, 
and formerly contained an animal. 

These tripolis occur in beds, extending over square miles 
in area and of many feet in thickness. They are mostly 
found among the beds of the tertiary formation, but there 
are some in the upper secondaries. The lowlands called 
“ Tidewater” Virginia and Maryland, contain great quanti¬ 
ties of tripoli; and it is also found in Missouri and in Penn¬ 
sylvania, and among the tertiaries of the Rocky mountains, 
as electro-silicon. 

It is used as an adulterant in fertilizers, and is of some 
use owing to the presence of ancient animal matter in the 




198 


GRITS AND SPARS. 


shells, shown by the odor when wet. It is also used for 
polishing powders, the coarser kinds being made up into 
bricks, and the finer grades being suspended in water like 
porcelain clay, and assorted into sizes by precipitation in 
different tanks. 

It is also one of the main ingredients in many patent 
soaps which have a gritty feel, and are great cleaners and 
polishers. 

CORUNDUM. 

This is pure alumina, and is the hardest known substance 
next to diamond. 

Gravity. 4.0 | Aluminum.*.53 p. ct. 

Hardness... 9.0 j Oxygen.... 47 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, sub-translucent; color, white, 
gray, yellow, red; feel, harsh; elasticity, brittle but tough- 
cleavage, imperfect; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This aluminum oxide or alumina is the same material 
that shows up as sapphire, ruby, etc., under certain con¬ 
ditions, and these are described in the chapter on Precious 
Stones. Corundum is not transparent, and its lustre is dull, 
and its colors are not brilliant. It is found among the 
crystalline rocks (primaries), and its special home is with 
chrysolite. In Western Carolina, Northern Georgia and 
Eastern Alabama it is found plentifully in crystals, ranging 
in size from a mere grain up to several hundred pounds 
weight. 

Emery is an impure corundum, the impurity being iron 
either as magnetite or hematite, and the quantities being 
in various proportions. Emery looks like black iron sand, 
and it is found in corundum neighborhoods. It will scratch 
quartz, which iron sand will not do, and it is also some¬ 
what lighter in weight than iron sand. Sometimes it is 
slightly magnetic. 

Corundum and emery vary very much in price. Seventy 
dollars a ton has been often paid for both of them, and half 






GRITS AND SPARS. 


190 


of that price has been often welcomed by producers. They 
are used as cutting and polishing powders, the powders of 
assorted sizes being made up into wheels like grindstones by 
cementing and molding. Corundum is harder than emery, 
but emery is the most useful for many purposes, as it frac¬ 
tures into grains with sharp-cutting edges, whereas corundum 
grains are apt to be roundish. 

N OV ACULITE. 

This is the Arkansas whetstone, and comes from the neigh¬ 
borhood of Hot Springs, where there is a ridge of it reach¬ 
ing many miles to Rockport, on the Ouachita River. It is a 
white massive silica, and much of it is almost in the condi¬ 
tion of horns tone. It is made into the finest hones tones or 
the coarsest whetstones, and all intermediate grades, by 
proper selection from the stock, but much of it is too much 
shattered by natural causes to be fit for any use except pul¬ 
verization, to mix with flint glass or china stock. 

BARYTES. 

This is called Heavy Spar also, on account of its great 
specific gravity. It descriptive list is as follows: 

Gravity.4.5 I Baryta.66 p. ct 

Hardness.3.1 j Sulphuric Acid.34 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
white, yellowish, reddish, bluish; feel, smooth to harsh; 
elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; 
texture, tabular. 

Barytes is principally used as an adulterant of white 
lead, but it makes the body of a very good paint of its own. 
“Pure barytic white lead” was a “trade-mark” which the 
painters enjoyed some years ago. The heavy twelve-pound 
paper upon which these words are being written is surfaced 
and weighted wdth baryta instead of the usual kaolin, and 
there is a growing demand for it among the paper mills. 

Carbonate of baryta is very similar to the sulphate in 
nearly all respects, but it is a virulent poison, and should 






200 


GRITS AND SPARS. 


be handled cautiously. It is found nearly everywhere that 
barytes is found, and it is now coming into use exten¬ 
sively as a substitute for the more expensive soda car¬ 
bonate in glass-making. A little sulphuric acid put on the 
carbonate will cause it to froth and elfervesce, but will not 
so affect the barytes. 

Barytes occurs in veins in all the primary and lower 
secondary rocks. Some veins are filled with it, and others 
have very little, but it is nearly always there. 

FELDSPAR. 

There are many feldspars, the principal ones being 
Anorthite , Labrad&rite , Albite , Oligoclase , Orthoclase , Andesite. 
The orthoclase is the most abundant, and is, therefore, 
selected for description. 

Gravit y.2.7 to 2.9 I Alumina. 17 p. ct. 

Hardness.5.8 to 6.1 Potassa. 17 p. c t. 

Silica .65 p. ct. | Dirt, etc . 1 p. ct. 

Lustre, pearty to vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, 
white, red, green, pink; feel, smooth to harsh; elasticity, 
brittle; cleavage, perfect in three directions; fracture, un¬ 
even ; texture, tabular. 

Albite is the soda felspar, and contains silica 69 per cent., 
alumina 20 and soda 11. 

Anorthite is the lime feldspar, and contains silica 43 per 
cent., alumina 3? and lime 20. 

Labradorite is lime soda feldspar, containing silica 53, 
alumina 30, lime 12 and soda 5 per cent. 

Andesite is also lime soda feldspar, containing silica 60, 
alumina 25, lime 7 and soda 8 per cent. 

Oligoclase is also lime soda feldspar, containing silica 62, 
alumina 24, lime 5 and soda 9 per cent. 

Ilyalophane is barytic potash feldspar, containing silica 53, 
alumina 21, baryta 15, potash 8, soda, etc., 3 per cent. 

The potash feldspar is the great source from which all our 
potash comes originally, and potash is made from it even 
nowadays by man, although Nature has done so much for 








GRITS AND SPARS. 


201 


him by decomposing the feldspar and allowing the potash to 
get into the soil and thence into vegetation. 

Any of these feldspars are used by the makers of what is 
called “ granite ware ” and “stoneware” and “ stone china.” 
They grind it to impalpable powder and float it in water in 
vats just as the fine kaolin is treated, and they thus hurry 
up Nature and get a clay that is very nearly kaolin, without 
awaiting decomposition. Good clear feldspars are worth 
from three to five dollars per ton, delivered at the potteries. 

FLUORSPAR. 

This is fluoride of lime, or, properly speaking, calcium 
fluoride. Its points are: 

Gravity.3.0 Calcium.51 p. ct. 

Hardness.4.0 Fluorine.49 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white, 
yellow, green, blue, red, but streak is always white; feel, 
rough; elasticity, brittle to sectile; cleavage, perfect; frac¬ 
ture, conchoidal to uneven; texture, granular, crystalline. 

This spar is much softer than quartz or feldspar, and is 
thus easily recognized. Its colors are many, and the spar 
itself is much used as a substance out of which to carve 
inkstands, paper weights, and all sorts of odds and ends; 
while the Chinese carve very respectable little devils and 
idols out of it. It is also the chief source of the fluoric 
acid used in the arts, and sells at from five to ten dollars 
per ton. It is found in beds and veins and disseminated 
crystals among the rocks of the primary formation and the 
lower secondaries. 

Cryolite is fluoride of aluminum and sodium, and its de¬ 
scriptive list is as follows : 

Gravity.. 3.0 I Aluminum.13 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.5 j Sodium.33 p. ct. 

Fluorine.64 p. ct. | 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, 
uneven to conchoidal; texture, massive, crystalline. 












202 


GRITS AND SPARS. 


The glassmakers in Eastern Pennsylvania pay sometimes 
thirty dollars a ton for this spar. It all comes from a large 
vein in gneiss rocks, in Greenland, at the present time, but it 
has never been systematically hunted for in our own country, 
and, therefore, it has not been found. Nine-tenths of it that 
comes here is snowy-white. 

strontia. 

This is the name commonly given to the nitrate of strontia, 
very much used in the making of fireworks. It does not 
occur native, but is derived from the following minerals: 

Celestite is sulphate of strontia, and its descriptive list is as 
follows: 

Gravity.3.9 to 4.0 Strontia.56 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.0 to 3.4 Sulphuric Acid.44 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, bluish- 

white to reddish-white; feel, rough; elasticity, brittle; 
cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, fibrous, gran¬ 
ular. 

This mineral is very handsome, being of just a faint shade 
of lieavenly-blue; hence its name. It does not effervesce 
under acids, and is found among the secondary formations, 
also in volcanic countries. 

Strontianite is carbonate of strontia, its descriptive list is: 

Gravi ty.3.6 I Strontia.70 p. ct. 

Hardness.3.8 | Carbonic Acid.30 p. ct. 

Lustre, vitreous, resinous; clearness, translucent; color, 
gray, white, yellow, pale green; feel, smoothisli; elasticity, 
brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; texture, fibrous, 
granular, tabular. 

This strontian mineral effervesces under application of 
acids. Both this and celestite color the flame red wiien 
burnt, and both minerals occur in the same neighborhoods. 










XVI. 

OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 


Alum—Asbestos—Soapstone—Talc—Sulphur—Graph¬ 
ite—Asphalt— Wax—Mica. 


alum. 

There are many kinds of alum, but the one in common 
use is the sulphate of potash and alumina. The other alums 
are those in which the potash is replaced by soda or some 
other alkaline base. Among these the ammonia alum comes 
next in importance to the potash alum here described: 

Gravity.1.7 I Aluminous Sulphate. .36 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.2 Water.46 p. ct. 

Potash Sulphate.18 p. ct. | 

Lustre, vitreous; clearness, translucent; color, white; 
feel, smooth; elasticity, brittle to sactile; cleavage, imper¬ 
fect; fracture, uneven; texture, crystalline; taste, puck- 
erish. 

Alum occurs native among some of the lower Silurian 
rocks and shales in Virginia, and among these and the pri¬ 
mary shales in many other localities. In England there are 
beds of shales among the tertiary formations, which shales 
contain the true potash alum. The owners roast the shales, 
leach out the alum with water, and then crystallize the alum 
after evaporation. In this country these shales have not 
been found, but that is probably because no proper search 
has been made. 








204 


OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 


Much American alum is made along the Ohio River by 
burning and leaching the slates and shales of the coal 
measures, and “cutting” with potash the solution of sul¬ 
phate of alumina so obtained. In France and Germany the 
sulphate of alumina is treated with solutions of the kainite 
and carnallite potash salts from the Strassfurt mines, in Ger¬ 
many, and even our Ohio River alum-boilers are now begin¬ 
ning to buy these potash salts instead of making their own 
ashes. There is a large amount of ammonia alum made in 
Philadelphia by using the waste ammonia from gas works. 


ASBESTOS. 

This mineral is cousin to hornblende, which was described 
among compound minerals, but differs in composition, etc., 
somewhat. Its points are: 


Gravity.3.0 to 3.5 

Hardness.not constant 

Silica.59 p. ct. 


Magnesia.29 p. ct. 

Lime. 6 p. ct. 

Alumina and Iron. 6 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly; clearness, sub-translucent to opaque; 
color, gray, white, yellowish, greenish; feel, smooth to 
greasy; elasticity, flexible; cleavage, perfect; fracture, un¬ 
even ; texture, fibrous. 

There is a variety of this in foliated texture, the sheets 
being made up of fibres interwoven; and this kind probably 
gave the first idea of making fire-proof cloth by weaving 
the fibrous varieties. Some of these finer varieties are so 
light that they will float on water, and the figure for specific 
gravity given above does not apply. 

Very fine asbestos is of very considerable but very change¬ 
able value, as the price which can be realized depends on the 
humors and fancies of one or two men whoiave bought or 
leased most of the valuable known deposits, and thus, with 
the aid of certain patented processes, they control the asbestos 
industry of this country. They make roofing paper, fire¬ 
proof writing paper, boiler and pipe coverings, and fire-proof 
paints out of it. 

Asbestos is to be looked for among the primary rocks, and 









OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS-. 


205 


particularly in the neighborhood of the serpentine dykes 
and hills. A cousin of this mineral is Steatite or Soapstone, 
which was referred to, under the name of Talc, among com¬ 
pound minerals. The finer varieties of soapstone are 
valuable also for fire-proofing purposes; whole stoves are 
made out of slabs of this stone, and they give out a much 
healthier heat than iron plates. By treating the soapstone 
with sulphuric acid, sulphate of magnesia (Epsom salts) is 
made in some countries. 

TALC. 

This group contains French Chalk, Meerschaum , Steatite or 
Soapstone, and Talc, which is here described: 

Gravity.2.4 to 2.7 Magnesia.32 p. ct. 

Hardness.1.0 to 1.2 Water.4 p. ct. 

Silica.64 p. ct. 

Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to opaque; color, 
white, gray, green, brown; feel, greasy; elasticity, flexible 
to brittle; cleavage, perfect; fracture, conchoidal to even; 
texture, massive, granular, or foliated, sometimes looks like 
starry radiations as seen in magnesian marble. 

Talc is the most abundant of all the great magnesian sili¬ 
cates. The principal gold regions of the world are among 
the talcose slates of the primary formation. 

SULPHUR. 

This is sometimes called 'Brimstone, and it is not so long 
ago that it was popularly supposed to have reached the 
earth’s surface by being blown out through the volcanic 
chimneys of the Inferno, during stirring times down there, 
caused by the chief engineer encouraging his lazy firemen. 
Its description is as follows : 

Gravity.2.0 I Sulphur.100 p. ct. 

Hardness.2.0 | 

Lustre, resinous to vitreous; clearness, sub-translucent; 
color, yellow, faintly greenish; feel, smooth; elasticity, 
sectile to brittle; cleavage, imperfect; fracture, conchoidal; 
texture, massive, crystalline. 











206 


OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 


Sulphur is found native in many localities, but principally 
in the neighborhood of volcanoes, active or extinct. It 
exists also among the clays and marls of the tertiary forma¬ 
tions, sometimes native, but mostly as sulphate of iron or 
free sulphuric acid. The great beds of gypsum (sulphate of 
lime) contain probably more sulphur than all other forma¬ 
tions on the earth’s surface. 

Sulphur is obtained by melting the volcanic rocks and ashy 
masses containing it, and the sulphur runs out like melting 
lead out of galena. Sometimes it is distilled in vapor and 
condensed as pure “flowers of sulphur.” It is also made 
from iron pyrite ores; but as these ores are chemical com¬ 
pounds and not mere mixtures, the sulphur takes up oxygen 
and the proceeses become intricate and require a chemist. 

The demand for sulphur for use in acid-making is recently 
being interfered with by the men who burn iron pyrite ores 
for this purpose. 

GRAPHITE. 


This is generally called Black Lead or Plumbago, and its 
description is this : 


Gravity.2.0 to 2.2 

Hardness.1.2 to 1.9 


Carbon 


100 p. ct. 


Lustre, metallic; clearness, opaque; color, black; feel, 
greasy; elasticity, sectile to flexible; cleavage, perfect; 
fracture, uneven ; texture, foliated. 

Sometimes its texture is earthy, with little or no lustre; 
but it becomes lustrous when rubbed. It is never actually 
pure, there being always a little iron or other grit mixed up 
with it. In order to use it for the making of lead pencils, 
and for lubricating purposes, it must be suspended in water, 
like the finest porcelain clay; when the grit, being heavier, 
drops to the bottom, and the liquid is drawn off to other 
tanks. Sometimes it is ground and floated off several times, 
to make the leads for finer grade pencils. The sediment is 
mixed with very little refined clay for soft pencils, and with 
more for harder pencils, and is squirted out of a syringe, 
and cut off at proper lengths. 






OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 


207 


Graphite is the best material known for making unburna- 
ble crucibles out of, although it is really the earliest of 
the coal formations. It is found down among the primary 
rocks, and, although the good beds of it are owned by the 
present monopolies, yet there may be other good beds found 
and other monopolies formed. 

ASPHALT. 

Asphalt is a hydro-carbon, and is found in such situations, 
in this country, as to justify the belief that it is the solid 
portion of petroleum left after the evaporation of the vola¬ 
tile portion. The great Pitch Lake, in Trinidad, however, 
is believed, by many observers, to be merely an ancient peat¬ 
bog, which, under tropical or subterranean heat, has been 
melted into pitch and asphalt, instead of having been com¬ 
pacted into lignite or coal. It varies considerably in its 
composition and physical features, so we will not attempt to 
give a descriptive list of it, but will merely recommend our 
readers to secure quickly any deposit of any substance that 
looks and smells like pitch or tar, as it is likely to be asphalt, 
and is becoming more valuable yearly. 

In Europe there are beds of limestone, containing a per¬ 
centage of asphalt, distributed all through the stone, and 
this stone, crushed and molded into blocks, or crushed and 
rolled hot in place, is the basis of the now fashionable 
Parisian pavement. These limestones are in the secondary 
formations, and it would be well to keep an eye open for 
similar beds in this country. The skunk limestones of the 
Devonian rocks, in Tennessee, may turn out to be worth 
something in this direction. The artificial asphalt block 
pavement, when made of anhydrous non-crystalline limestone 
and well-burned asphalt, is a really first-class pavement. 

Mineral Wax , sometimes called ozokerite and other hard 
names, is, like paraffine, derived from petroleum, but by 
natural processes instead of artificial, and is to be looked for 
in rock cavities from which oil has escaped or evaporated. 
It is in great demand among the electricians for insulating 
purposes 


208 


OTHER VALUABLE MINERALS. 


MICA. 


This is a large group, the principal members of which are 
named Biotite, Phlogopite and Muscovite. The latter is the 
most common and abundant, and is selected for description. 


Gravity.. 
Hardness 
Alumina. 
Silica.... 


.2.7 to 3.1 
2.0 to 2.5 
.34 p. ct. 
.47 p. ct. 


Potassa.. 
Water ... 
Sundries 


9 p. ct. 
.4 p. ct. 
.6 p. ct. 


Lustre, pearly; clearness, translucent to transparent; 
color, white, green, yellow, black; feel, smooth; elasticity, 
flexible to elastic; ^cleavage, perfect; fracture, uneven; 
texture, foliated. 

The coloring matter of the micas is usually iron, and 
often a part of the potassa is replaced by soda. Mica is one 
of the principal ingredients of the true granite, in which 
rock it is easily distinguished in little bundles of plates or 
scales. Sometimes it is in large pockets in granite or gneiss 
rocks, and then can be split up into transparent plates, 
which are used for stove plates or windows. Some people 
call it isinglass. 










INDEX 



Page. 

Acanthite.113 

Actinolite. 18 

Agate.142 

Age of Coal. 41 

“ Fishes.48 

“ Fungi. 48 

“ Mammals. 49 

** Man.49 

“ Mollusks.48 

“ Reptiles.49 

Agglomerate.23 

Aquamarine.146, 196 

Aqueous Rocks.36 

Alabama Coal. 68 

Alabaster.143,186 

Alaska Diamond.145 

Albite.18, 200 

Allanite. 19 

Alum.203 

Alum Shales.204 

Alumina ..17, 198 

Aluminum.141 

Amalgam.139 

Amber.144 

Ambligonite.188 

Amethyst.145 

Amherst Stone.170 

Ammonia.185 

Amphibole. 18 

Amygdaloid. 22 

Andesite.18, 200 

Anglesite.125 

Anhydrite.186 

Ankerite. 87 

Anorthite.18, 200 

Anthracite. 59 

Anticlinal .77, 78 

Antimonial Glance.138 

Antimonial Silver.113 

Antimonite.138 

Antimony.137 

Apatite.187 

Aphrodite.155 

Argentite.109 

Arsenopyrite. 88 

Artificial Stone.175 

Asbestos.18, 204 

Asphalt.207 

Asphalt Blocks.207 

Asphaltic Limestones.207 


Page. 

Atomic Weights.11, 15 

Atoms. 14 

Augite. 19 

Azurite.164 

Bad Lands. 43 

Barytes.199 

Barytic Paint.196 

Basalt.22 

Bastite.20,163 

Bauxite.178, 180 

Beads.147 

Bell Metal.122 

Berea Stone...170 

Beryl.146 

Bicarbonates.183 

Bicromates.135 

Big Vein. 70 

Binaries. 16 

Biotite. 17 

Bituminous. 58 

Black Band.86 

Black Copper.119 

Black Granite.30 

Black Iron... . 83 

Black Jack.126 

Black Lead.206 

Blanket Lodes.54 

Block Coal.61, 68 

Blow Outs.54 

Blue Spar.154 

Blue Stone. .171 

Bog Ore. 86 

Bonanza.55 

Borax.184 

Boracite.184 

Bornite.119 

Bort.151 

Boulangerite.124 

Boulder Clay.45 

Bouronite.124 

Breccia.167 

Brick Clay.177 

Brimstone.205 

Brown Hematite.85 

Brown Ochre.194 

Brown Stone.42, 169 

Caking Coal.63 

Calamine.127 

Calcite.33, 165 

J Calcium Fluoride.201 









































































































INDEX 


Page. 

Calico Rock.167 

Calomel.140 

Cannel Coal.60, 68 

Carbon.56 

Carbonate Copper.164 

“ Iron.86 

“ Lead.134 

“ Lime.40,168 

“ Magnesia.33,166 

“ Manganese. 01 

“ Soda.183 

“ Zinc.128 

Carbonite.151 

Carnallite.192 

Camel ian.146 

Carolina Phosphate.189 

Carrara Marble.167 

Cassiterite.121 

Cataclysm. 27 

Catoctin Paint.195 

Cat’s Eye.156 

Celestite.202 

Cement.174 

Cerargyrite.110 

Cerolite.20, 163 

Cerusite.124 

Chalcedonic.148, 147 

Chalcocite.118 

Chalcopyrite.117 

Chalk. 41 

Chalk, French. 20 

Chalybite. 86 

China Clay.179 

Chinese Devils.201 

Chlorides Magnesia.192 

“ Mercury.140 

“ Potash.192 

“ Silver.110 

“ Sodium.182 

Chlorite. 21 

Chloropal.155 

Chrome .134 

Chromite.135 

Chrome Steel.134 

Chrysoberyl.147 

Chrysocalla.120 

Chrysolite. 21 

Chrysoprase. .148 

Cincinnati Rise.35, 70 

Cinnabar.139 

Cinnamon Stone.153 

Clausthalite...126 

Clay.43, 177 

Clay Iron Stone.86 

Clearness.... 7 

Cleavage. 7 

Cleveland Stone Co.170 

Coal.41, 56 

Coal—Anthracite.59 

“ Bituminous.58 


Page. 

Coal—Block.61, 68 

“ Cannel.60, 68 

“ Splint.61,68 

Cobalt.133 

Cobalt Bloom.134 

Cobalt Pyrite.133 

Cobaltite.1*1 

Coke. 63 

Coking Coals.63 

Color. 9 

Compounds...*. 16 

Conglomerate.23 

Contact Veins.53 

Copper.116 

Copper Glance.118 

Copper Nickel.131 

Copper Pyrite.117 

Coprolites.189 

Core Rock.25 

Corundum.198 

Crucibles.207 

Cryolite.201 

Cumberland Cement.177 

Cuprite.119 

Cutting and Filling. 27 

Deep River. 73 

Density. 9 

Deposit. 50 

Diallage. 19 

Diamond.148 

Diatoms.38,197 

Dinas.181 

Diorite.23 

Dog-tooth Spar.166 

Dolerite.23 

Dolomite.33,165,166 

Drift Clay.45 

Dry Bone.128 

Dyestone.&4 

Dykes.51 

Dysclasite .113 

Earthquakes.25 

Easter Island. 26 

Egyptian Granite..30 

Elastic Sandstone.33,170 

Elasticity . 7 

Electro Silicon.197 

Elements. 11 

Emerald.151 

Emery ....: .198 

Enargite.117 

Energy.13 

Eozoic. 48 

Eozoon.48 

Epidote.19 

Equator.24 

Eruptive Rocks. 24 

Fahlerz.118 

False Coals.65 

False Topaz.145,160 



























































































































INDEX 


Page. 

Fayallite.21 

Feel. 6 

Feldspar.18, 200 

Ferro-Manganese. 90 

Ferruginous Cement.149, 150 

Filling and Cutting. 27 

Fire Clay.178 

Fire Opal.156 

Fishes.48 

Fissure Veins.51 

Flexible Sandstone.150 

Flint.147 

Floatstone.156 

Flowers Sulphur.206 

Fluoride.201 

Fluorspar.201 

Fossil Earmarks.47 

Fossiliferous Iron. 84 

Fracture..... 9 

Franklinite. 83 

Free Gold.97 

Freeport Coal. 69 

French Chalk.20, 205 

Frieslebenite.114 

Fuller’s Earth.180 

Fungi. 48 

Gahnite.129 

Galena.123 

Garnet.152 

Gas. 76 

Gas Prospects.76 

Gas Rocks. 76 

Gas Springs. 76 

Gash Veins.53 

Genthite.132 

Geological Chart. 29 

Geological Column.28 

Glacial Period.45 

Globe Shrinkage.25 

Gneiss.31, 172 

Gold. 93 

Gold Placers.104 

Gold Saving.102 

Gold Slates.99 

Gold Testing.105 

Gossan.89, 119 

Gothite.86 

Granite.30, 171 

Granite Ware.201 

Graphite.206 

Gravel. 44 

Gravity. 9 

Gray Antimony.138 

Gray Copper.118 

Great Conglomerate.67,169 

Green Sand.44, 193 

Green Stone. 23 

Greenland Spar.202 

Grits.197 

Grunanitc.132 


Page, 

Guano.189 

Gymnite.20,163 

Gypsum.186 

Halite.182 

Hardness. 8 

Heavy Spar.199 

Hematite.83 

Hone Ore.86 

Honestone. 199 

Horn Silver.110 

Hornblende.:.18 

Ilornstone.147 

Hot Springs Crystals.145 

Huronian.34 

Hyacinth...152 

Hyalophane.200 

Hydrargyrite.140 

Hydration. 39 

Hydrocarbon. 76 

Hydrozincite ..128 

Hypargyrite.113 

Iceland Spar.166 

Igneous Rocks.22 

Inferno.205 

Infusoria.38,197 

Iridium.140 

Iron. 82 

Iron Carbonate. 86 

Iron Pyrite. 88 

Ironclad.27 

Ironstone. 84 

Isinglass.17, 208 

Ilvaite. 19 

Itacolumite.33,150,170 

Jade.161 

Jasper.153 

Jasper Opal.156 

Jet.145 

Kainite.191 

Kaolin.18,179 

Kidney Ore. 86 

Kidney Stone.161 

Kittanning Coal.69 

Labradorian...34 

Labradorite...18, 200 

Lapis Lazuli.161 

Laurentian.34 

Lava.22 

Lazulite.154 

Lead.123 

Lead Carbonate.124 

Lead Chloride.125 

Leadhillite.125 

Lead Pencils.206 

Lead Sulphide.123 

Lenticular Veins.51 

Leucagite. 19 

Lignite..C2, 74 

Lime. 16 

Limestone.40,168 



























































































































INDEX 


Limonite .... . 

Lithographic Stone.. 

Loadstones. 

Lodes. 

Lower Coals. 

Lustre... 

Magnesia. 

Magnesite. 

Magnesian Silicate.. 

Magnetic Pyrite. 

Magnetite. 

Mahoning Sandstone. 

Malachite. 

Malacolite. 

Mammals. 

Mammoth Vein. 

Manganese. 

Manganese Glance... 

Manganite. 

Marble. 

Marcasite. 

Margarite.... 

Marl.... 

Marmolite. 

Matter. 

Medina Sandstone.. 

Meerschaum. 

Melaconite. 

Menaccanite. 

Mercury. 

Metamorphic Rocks. 

Mexican Onyx. 

Miargyrite... 

Mica..... 

Millerite. 

Millstone Grit. 

Mimetite. 

Mineral Compounds 

Mineral Paints. 

Mineral Wax. 

Molecules. 

Mollusks. 

Montalban.. 

Monticellite. 

Mundic... 

Muscovite.. 

Native Silver. 

Natives. 

Natural Cement. 

Natural Coke. 

Natural Gas. 

Needle Ore. 

Nephrite.. 

New Red Sandstone 

Nickel. 

Nickel Bloom. 

Nickel Glance. 

Nickel Pyrite,.. 

Nickelite. 

Nitrate Lime.. 


Page. 

.85 

.168 

. 83 

.54 

. 67 

. 5 

. 16 

33, 165, 166 

.20, 205 

.88, 130 

. 83 

.70,169 

.164 

. 19 

.49 

. 70 

.90 

.90 

.90, 91 

.33,165 

. 88 

. 21 

.44, 193 

.20, 163 

. 13 

.169 

.20, 154, 205 

.119 

. 84 

.138 

. 27 

.164 

.113 

.17 208 

.131 

.67, 169 

.126 

. 16 

.194 

.207 

.. 14 

.. 48 

..34 

.21 

.88 

.17 

..108 

. 16 

.176 

. 64 

. 76 

. 84 

.161 

. 72 

.130 

.132 

.132 

.131 

.131 

..184 


Page. 


Nitrate Potash. .184 

Nitrate Soda.184 

Nitre.184 

Normal Coal.58 

North River Blue Stone.171 

Novaculite....199 

Obsidian.22 

Ochre.194 

Oil.76 

Oil Breaks. 76 

Oil Prospects.76 

Oil Rocks.76 

Oil Springs. 76 

Oligoclase.18, 200 

Onyx.155 

Oolite.38, 168 

Opal.156 

Oriental Amethyst.159 

Oriental Emerald.152, 159 

Oriental Ruby.157 

Oriental Topaz.159, 160 

Oriskany Sandstone.169 

Orthoclase.18, 200 

Osmium .140 

Osteolite.189 

Ouvarovite.153 

Oxide Copper.118 

“ Iron. 83 

“ Manganese. 91 

“ Nickel.132 

“ Tin.121 

“ Zinc.127 

Ozark. 35 

Ozokerite.207 

Palisades. 22 

Paraffine..61, 68 

Parian Marble.167 

Parisian Pavement.. .207 

Paving Stone.172 

Peacock Coal. 58 

Peat. 62 

Pegmatite. 30 

Penninite. 21 

Peroxide Manganese. 90 

Petrified Wood.157 

Petroleum. 76 

Phlogopite. 17 

Phosgenite...125 

Phosphates.187 

Pitch Lake.207 

Pittsburgh Coal. 71 

Plaster.186 

Platinum.140 

Plumbago.206 

Polybasite.113 

Polyhalite.191 

Porcelain Clay.18, 179 

Porphyry.23, 172 

Port Deposit Stone.172 

Portland Cement... 




























































































































INDEX 


Page. 

Potash .16,190 

Potomac Red Sandstone.. .169, 170 


Potsdam Sandstone.169 

Potter’s Clay.178 

Prase.145 

Precious Serpentine.20,163 

Primaries. 34 

Primary Formation. 27 

Prochlorite. 21 

Protogene...30. 171 

Proustite.!.112 

Psilomelane. 91 

Pumice. 22 

Purple Copper.119 

Pyrargyrite. 112 

Pyrites—Antimony.138 

“ Cobalt.133 

“ Copper.117 

“ Iron. 88 

“ Lead.123 

“ Manganese. 90 

“ Mercury.139 

“ Nickel.131 

“ Tin.122 

“ Zinc.126 

Pyrolusite. 90 

Pyromorphite.126 

Pyroxene. 19 

Pyrrhotite.88, 130 

Quartz. 17 

Quartz Gold. 97 

Quartzite. 32 

Quaternaries. 45 

Quicksilver.138 

Ransome Stone.155,175 

Red Copper.119 

Red Granite. 30 

Red Hematite. 83 

Red Hot. 24 

Red Lead.196 

Red Ochre.194 

Red Zinc.129 

Reptiles. 49 

Rhodocrocite. 92 

Ribbon Vein. 51 

Richmond Coal. 73 

Ripidolite ....'. 21 

Rock Crystal.145 

Roman Cement.177 

Rose Quartz.145 

Rosendale Cement.177 

Rubellite..160 

Ruby.157 

Ruby Silver.112 

Sahlite... 10 

Sal Ammoniac.185 

Salt.182 

Saltpetre.184 

Sand. 44 

Sand Hills ^. 43 


Page, 

Sandstone. ..39,168 

Sapphire.158 

Sardonyx.156 

Sartorite.126 

Sassolite.184 

Satin Spar.166,186 

Schist. 32 

Scotch Granite.30,171 

Scotch Pig.87 

Secondaries. 35 

Sedimentary Rocks.35 

Segregated Veins.51 

Selenite.186 

Selenitic Cement.177 

Seneca Stone.169,170 

Sepiolite.154 

Serpentine. ...20,163 

Shale.32, 41 

Shaler’s Quarries.169 

Siderite. 86 

Silica. 17 

Silicate Lime. 175 

Silicate Magnesia.20, 205 

Silicate Zinc.127 

Silver.106 

Silver Chloride.110 

Silver Glance.109 

Silver Ores.109 

Silver Saving.114 

Silver Sulphide.109 

Silver Testing.115 

Skunk Limestone.207 

Slate.32, 41, 170 

Smalt.196 

Smaltite. 133 

Smaragdite. 18 

Smectite.155 

Smoky Quartz.145 

Soapstone.20, 205 

Soda.16, 1R3 

Sodium Chloride.182 

Soil.46 

Spars.197 

Spathic Ore. 86 

Specific Gravity. 9 

Specular Iron. 84 

Sphalerite.126 

Spicules. 38 

Spiegeleisen.90 

Spinel Ruby.157 

Splint Coal.61, 68 

Spores. 38 

Squirt. 55 

Stalactite.165, 166 

Stalagmite.165, 166 

Stanriite.122 

Steatite.20, 205 

Stephanite.110, 112 

Stibnite.138 

Stone Ware. ,,,,,.201 





























































































































INDEX 


Page. 


Stream Tin.......122 

Stromeyerite.114 

Strontia. 202 

Strontianite.202 

Sub-conglomerate.67 

Sulphate Lime.186 

Sulphate Potash.191 

Sulphide Antimony.138 

“ Cobalt.133 

“ Copper.117 

“ Iron. 88 

“ Lead.123 

“ Manganese. 90 

“ Mercury.139 

“ Nickel.131 

“ Silver.109 

“ Tin.122 

“ Zinc.126 

Sulphur.205 

Sussexite.184 

Syenite.30,171 

Sylvanite. 98 

Sylvite.192 

Symbols.11, 15 

Synclinal. 78 

Talc......20, 205 

Talcose Slates. 21 

Tallow Clay.128 

Telluride Gold. 98 

Ternary Compounds.16, 17 

Tertiaries. 43 

Tertiary Coals. 74 

Tetrahedrite...118 

Texture. 6 

Tin.121 

Tinstone.121 

Titanic Iron. 84 

Topaz.159 

Tourmaline.160 

Trachyte. 23 

Transition Rocks.27 

Trap. 22 


Page. 


Tremolite .. 18 

Triassic.42 

Triassic Coals. 72 

Trinidad Pitch.207 

Triplite.188 

Tripoli.197 

Turgite. 86 

Turquoise. 160 

Ulexite.184 

Ultramarine.161, 196 

Umber.195 

Upper Coals. 71 

Uranium. 141 

Vanadite.126 

Variegated Marble.167 

Vein Gold. 95 

Veins.50 

Verde Antique.163, 167 

Vermilion.195 

Vitreous Copper.118 

Vitreous Quartz. 17 

Wad. 91 

Wagnerite .188 

Wash Gold.98 

Washoe Pan.114 

Water. 16 

Wavellite.188 

Wax.207 

Whetstone.199 

White Lead.196 

White Mountains.34 

Willemite.128 

Wohlerite.21 

Wood Opal.157 

Yellow Ochre.15)4 

Zinc.126 

Zinc Blende.126 

Zinc White.196 

Zincite.128 

Zinkenite.126 

Zircon.153 

Zoisite.19 


Member Am. Soc. Civil Engineers. 

Member Am. Inst. Mining Engineers. 

Associate Am. Inst. Electrical Engineers. 


FREDERICK H. SMITH, 

Engineer and Geologist, 

Reports on Railway, Mineral, Industrial and other Properties. 
Places Contracts for Bridges, Equipment, Machinery, &c. 


227 E. German Street 


Baltimore, Md, 
























































































EDGE MOOR BRIDGE WORKS, 

WILMINGTON, DEL. 

BARTLETT, HAYWARD & CO. 

Architectural and other Iron Work—Cast & Wrought, 
205 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 

H. McSHANE & CO. 

Bell and Brass Founders, 

441 to 465 North Street, Baltimore, Md. 

MORTON, REED & CO. 

Railroad, Factory, Machinists’ and other Supplies, 

3 and 5 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 

THOMAS K. CAREY & BROS. 

Railroad, Factory, Machinists’ and other Supplies, 
216 Light Street, Baltimore, Md. 

YAILE & YOUNG, 

Patent Metallic Skylights, 

309 to 311 North Street, Baltimore, Md. 

Prof. P. B. WILSON, 

Consulting and Analytical Chemist, 

304 Second Street, Baltimore, Md. 

BALTIMORE NEWS COMPANY, 

Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Stationery, &c., &c. 
Sun Iron Building, Baltimore, Md. 

MANUFACTURERS’ RECORD, 

Southern Industrial, Railway and Financial Progress, 
Exchange Place & Commerce St., Baltimore, Md. 










JOHN H. SHANE & CO. 

Book and Job Printers, 

Oyer 12 South Street, Baltimore, Md. 

BROWN & LOWNDES, 

Bankers and Brokers, 

208 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 

MIDDENDORF, OLIVER & CO. 

Bankers and Brokers, 

213 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 

JOHN A. HAMBLETON & CO. 

Bankers and Brokers, 

9 South Street, Baltimore, Md. 

WILSON, COLSTON & CO. 

Bankers and Brokers, 

216 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Md. 

BARTLETT S. JOHNSTON, 

Broker in Stocks, Oil, Grain and Cotton, 

237 E. German Street, Baltimore, Md. 

BALDWIN & PENNINGTON, 

Architects, 

Farmers and Merchants Bank Bldg., Baltimore, Md. 

ryan & McDonald, 

Rail Road Contractors, 

Farmers and Merchants Bank Bldg., Baltimore, Md. 

SOUTH BALTIMORE CAR WORKS, 

Freight Cars of all kinds. Capacity, 15 Cars- per day, 
Farmers & Merchants Bank Bldg., Baltimore, Md. 




























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